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20 Startups That Could Be Hit Hard by New $100,000 H-1B Visa Fees

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Startups and the tech industry have weathered a whipsawing week of foreign worker visa changes.

On Friday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order requiring new H-1B visa applications to pay a $100,000 fee. The tax seeks to “curb abuses that displace US workers,” the Trump administration said in a press release. 

In the days since, the administration proposed that H-1B visas be approved based on skill level and wages, instead of the current randomized lottery system. It’s also floated the possibility that certain workers, such as doctors, may be exempt from the fee.

The rapid policy shifts have put some startups in a tricky spot when it comes to hiring skilled talent, since H-1B visas help many tech companies employ foreign engineers and other technical hires.

Some venture capitalists and founders are increasingly bullish on foreign tech hubs in places like Canada and the United Kingdom, while others hope the proposed pay-to-play model will help them attract even better talent.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also commented on the changes. “We need to get the smartest people in the country, and streamlining that process and also sort of aligning financial incentives seems good to me,” Altman said on CNBC this week.

Business Insider looked at publicly available data from the Department of Labor and US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to see which startups had received the most H-1B visa approvals so far in 2025.

Those approval numbers may not equal the number of people on H-1B visas currently employed at the startups.

Databricks, Cohesity, Stripe, Gusto, Plaid, and Deel declined to comment for this story. Magic Leap said it’s following the recent executive order and additional guidance closely to comply with all visa and immigration laws.

The remaining startups included didn’t respond to requests for comment.

These are the 20 startups to get the most H-1B visas approved this year.

ByteDance

BuzzFeed News reported Monday that TikTok's owner ByteDance had scraped content from Instagram and Snapchat in 2017 to create fake accounts on Flipagram, TikTok's predecessor. Here, a TikTok employee looks at his mobile phone as he walks past the logo of TikTok in a London office on February 9, 2022.

Chinese company ByteDance owns TikTok.


Tolga Akmen/AFP via Getty Images

Certified H-1B approvals: 1,360

Total employees worldwide: 120,000, according to Pitchbook

Total funding: Nearly $19 billion, according to Pitchbook

Headquarters: Beijing

Databricks

DataBricks CEO Ali Ghodsi

DataBricks CEO Ali Ghodsi


Databricks

Certified H-1B approvals: 248

Total employees worldwide: About 8,000, according to the company

Total funding: Over $15 billion, according to the company

Headquarters: San Francisco

Stripe

Stripe Co-founder and CEO Patrick Collison

Stripe Co-founder and CEO Patrick Collison.


AOP.Press/Corbis/Getty Images

Certified H-1B approvals: 151

Total employees worldwide: About 9,000, according to the company

Total funding: $2.2 billion, according to the company

Headquarters: San Francisco and Dublin

OpenAI

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.


Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Certified H-1B approvals: 76

Total employees worldwide: 4,500, according to PitchBook

Total Funding: nearly $35 billion, according to PitchBook

Headquarters: San Francisco

Cohesity

Sanjay Poonen

Sanjay Poonen, Cohesity CEO.

Cohesity


Certified H-1B approvals: 65

Total employees worldwide: 6,000, according to the company

Total Funding: nearly $2 billion, according to the company

Headquarters: Santa Clara, California

Applied Intuition

Applied Intuition CEO Qasar Younis.

Applied Intuition CEO Qasar Younis.

Matthias Balk/picture alliance via Getty Images


Certified H-1B approvals: 65

Total employees worldwide: 492, according to PitchBook

Total funding: over $1 billion, according to PitchBook

Headquarters: Mountain View, California

Saviynt

Certified H-1B approvals: 55

Total employees worldwide: 1,361, according to PitchBook

Total funding: $530 million, according to PitchBook

Headquarters: El Segundo, California

Anthropic

Dario Amodei speaking at the World Economic Forum.

“And then in twelve months, we may be in a world where AI is writing essentially all of the code,” Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei said at a Council on Foreign Relations event on Monday.

Halil Sagirkaya/Anadolu via Getty Images


Certified H-1B approvals: 41

Total employees worldwide: 1,000, according to PitchBook

Total Funding: $32 billion, according to PitchBook

Headquarters: San Francisco

Scale AI

Scale AI Co-Founder Alexandr Wang attends a private dinner for technology and business leaders hosted by U.S. President Donald Trump in the State Dining Room at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., September 4, 2025. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

Scale AI cofounder and Meta chief AI officer Alexandr Wang.


Brian Snyder/REUTERS

Certified H-1B approvals: 34

Total employees worldwide: 1,400, according to PitchBook

Total funding: $16.4 billion, according to PitchBook

Headquarters: San Francisco

Ripple

Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple, speaks on stage during day three of Collision 2022 at Enercare Centre in Toronto, Canada.

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse.


Stephen McCarthy/Getty Images

Certified H-1B approvals: 33

Total employees worldwide: 900, according to PitchBook

Total funding: $326 million, according to PitchBook

Headquarters: San Francisco

Gusto

Gusto CEO Joshua Reeves.

Gusto CEO Joshua Reeves.


Gusto

Certified H-1B approvals: 33

Total employees worldwide: 2,800, according to the company

Total funding: $751 million, according to PitchBook

Headquarters: San Francisco

Rivos

Certified H-1B approvals: 32

Total employees worldwide: Unknown

Total funding: $370 million, according to PitchBook

Headquarters: Santa Clara, California

Magic Leap

Magic Leap 2 augmented reality glasses

Magic Leap sells augmented reality glasses.

JOSEP LAGO/AFP via Getty Images


Certified H-1B approvals: 28

Total employees worldwide: 1,254, according to PitchBook

Total funding: $3.98 billion, according to PitchBook

Headquarters: Plantation, Florida

In a statement to BI, a Magic Leap spokesperson said the company is following the recent executive order and additional guidance closely to comply with all visa and immigration laws. Magic Leap said it doesn’t disclose employee numbers or funding totals.

Verkada

Verkada CEO Filip Kaliszan.

Verkada CEO Filip Kaliszan.


Verkada

Certified H-1B approvals: 26

Total employees worldwide: 2,455, according to PitchBook

Total funding: $655 million, per PitchBook

Headquarters: San Mateo, California

Plaid

Zach Perret, cofounder and CEO of Plaid, speaks on stage during Web Summit 2021 at the Altice Arena in Lisbon, Portugal.

Plaid cofounder and CEO Zach Perret.


Cody Glenn/Getty Images

Certified H-1B approvals: 24

Total employees worldwide: 1,200, according to PitchBook

Total funding: $1.31 billion, per PitchBook

Headquarters: San Francisco

Nuro

Nuro CEO Jiajun Zhu poses for a photo against a purple background.

Nuro cofounder and CEO Jiajun Zhu.


Nuro

Certified H-1B approvals: 23

Total employees worldwide: 974, according to PitchBook

Total funding: $2.33 billion, per PitchBook

Headquarters: Mountain View, California

Form Energy

Mateo Jamarillo Form Energy

Form’s CEO and cofounder Mateo Jaramillo.


Form Energy

Certified H-1B approvals: 23

Total employees worldwide: 854, according to PitchBook

Total funding: $1.43 billion, according to PitchBook

Headquarters: Somerville, Massachusetts

Deel

Deel CEO alex bouaziz on stage at Collision conference in 2022

Alex Bouaziz, Deel on Centre Stage during day two of Collision 2022 at Enercare Centre in Toronto, Canada.


Vaughn Ridley/Sportsfile for Collision via Getty Images

Certified H-1B approvals: 22

Total employees worldwide: Over 6,500, according to the company

Total funding: $689 million, according to PitchBook

Headquarters: Deel is fully remote, with no physical offices.

Zipline

Zipline drone takes off from 25-foot long platform

A 2021 Zipline drone.


Zipline

Certified H-1B approvals: 21

Total employees worldwide: 1,446, according to PitchBook

Total funding: $1.23 billion, according to PitchBook

Headquarters: South San Francisco

Brex

Henrique Dubugras Pedro Franceschi

Brex cofounders Pedro Franceschi, CEO, and Henrique Dubugras, chairman.


Brex

Certified H-1B approvals: 21

Total employees worldwide: About 1,100, according to the company

Total funding: $1.29 billion, according to the company

Headquarters: San Francisco

Insider Inc.’s parent company, Axel Springer, is an investor in Magic Leap.



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