3 AI execs say Trump's $100K H-1B visa fee could hinder startups and innovation (www.businessinsider.com)

President Trump’s executive order imposing a $100,000 H‑1B visa fee has rattled Silicon Valley, especially AI startups that rely on foreign technical talent. AI leaders outside Big Tech — Glean CEO Arvind Jain, Writer CEO May Habib, and workforce adviser Suzanne Rabicoff — told Business Insider the surcharge could make it prohibitively expensive for small teams to hire ML engineers, data scientists and researchers who are critical for building LLMs, chatbots and other AI systems. Startups like Glean (valued at $7.2B) and Writer (~$2B) say many early hires have been visa holders who helped them scale model development and production; executives warn the fee risks concentrating talent at FAANG firms that can absorb the cost. Technically and strategically, the move could change how AI talent is sourced and trained: firms may pause hiring abroad, accelerate onshoring strategies (graduate academies, retraining in cloud ops, data engineering and applied GenAI), or shift investment toward automation and infrastructure rather than headcount. That could slow cross‑pollination of ideas and narrow diversity in model development, potentially hurting innovation and US competitiveness in AI. Some companies say hiring plans aren’t changing immediately, but the policy creates uncertainty and may reshape the startup ecosystem’s ability to compete in a talent‑intensive AI race.