The one-time $100,000 surcharge on new H-1B visas announced by former President Donald Trump has turned into a strategic divider inside the U.S. technology sector. Frontier artificial-intelligence firms are absorbing the cost and expanding foreign recruiting, even as larger, more diversified companies pull back.
Nvidia, OpenAI, and Anthropic sharply increased certified H-1B petitions in early 2026, according to data reviewed by Fortune. By contrast, Amazon, Alphabet’s Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Apple all recorded double-digit declines. The pattern underscores a widening gap between capital-rich AI labs focused on a few hundred elite researchers and sprawling tech corporations that sponsor thousands of visa holders across job categories. Additional context on AI hiring trends can be found in the Artificial Intelligence section of S&N Global.
A costly but manageable premium
Trump’s policy, which took effect on 21 September 2025, imposes the fee only once, mostly on first-time petitions filed from abroad. Renewals and transfers inside the United States remain exempt. For a boutique AI lab sitting on venture capital or strategic funding in the billions, the charge is a rounding error; for companies processing thousands of visas each year, it amounts to a budget line that can no longer be ignored.
Nvidia filed roughly 765 certified petitions in the first quarter of 2026, a 19 percent increase versus the same period a year earlier. OpenAI more than tripled its filings, while Anthropic’s tally climbed from about 10 to almost 60. “Aligning financial incentives around skilled immigration seems good,” OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman said when the rule was introduced. Nvidia’s Jensen Huang told CNBC he was “glad to see” the administration link payment to high-skill access.
Scale works in the opposite direction for Big Tech. Amazon remains the single largest H-1B sponsor in the country; a six-figure surcharge on every new hire would quickly accumulate into hundreds of millions of dollars. Google and Microsoft, which also depend on broad visa pipelines, cut applications sharply in the first quarter of 2026, with smaller drops at Meta and Apple.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services received 211,600 properly submitted petitions for fiscal-year 2027, down from 343,981 the year before. According to the agency, that contraction reflects fewer filings from smaller businesses that struggle to cover the fee. A Richmond Federal Reserve study previously linked successful H-1B lottery outcomes to higher revenues and stronger survival rates among young firms.
Legal uncertainty ahead
The surcharge’s future is now in doubt. On Monday, U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin in Boston ruled that the fee constitutes an unauthorized tax, siding with 20 states that sued the federal government. “The Policy imposes a tax on H-1B petitions without the requisite delegation by Congress,” Sorokin wrote in a summary judgment.
The decision conflicts with an earlier ruling from a Washington, D.C., court that upheld the fee in a separate lawsuit brought by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. A third challenge, filed by religious and labor organizations in San Francisco, remains pending. With three appellate circuits set to weigh in, attorneys expect the question to reach a higher court—potentially the Supreme Court—well before the policy’s scheduled expiration in September 2026.
In the meantime, employers must decide whether to pay a charge that could be invalidated retroactively. The administration has indicated it will appeal Sorokin’s judgment, prolonging the period of regulatory ambiguity. For AI specialists commanding seven-figure compensation packages, the added expense is still minor compared with the cost of losing top talent to overseas rivals.
“I don’t think my family would have been able to afford the $100,000,” Nvidia’s Huang said last October, noting that today’s subsidy by employers makes the path feasible for recruits who could not self-fund the fee. His comment highlights a second-order concern: whether individual applicants, rather than companies, will ultimately bear the burden if legal challenges fail.
Policy volatility aside, the numbers suggest the fee is achieving an unintended result. Instead of damping overall demand, it is concentrating high-skill immigration among the best-capitalized AI players, potentially deepening the talent moat they already enjoy. Should the surcharge survive judicial review, Amazon and its peers will need new strategies—such as recruiting existing domestic H-1B holders or leaning on other visa categories—to stay competitive.
According to USCIS, the statutory H-1B cap of 85,000 visas per year remains unchanged, meaning supply constraints persist regardless of price. If the courts ultimately void the surcharge, pent-up demand from cost-sensitive employers could trigger a filing surge ahead of the 2027 deadline. Either way, the scramble for machine-learning expertise shows no sign of easing.
The episode illustrates how a seemingly simple fiscal lever can reshape hiring patterns across the digital economy. As litigation continues, corporate immigration teams and prospective visa holders face a singular question: is the $100,000 premium a fleeting obstacle or a new baseline for entering America’s most coveted technical roles?
