AI Talent Is Fleeing US Due To H1-B Chaos. China, EU, UK, Canada Benefit

In truth, the exodus of AI talent is not just about H1-B visas. A virulent anti-immigration campaign by the Trump administration has made the once immigrant-welcoming US an increasingly hostile destination, at least for now. 

The beneficiaries of this small-minded policy are the EU, Canada, China and any other country where money is encouraging research and development opportunities. The US will be the poorer for this as the creation of effective but less expensive AI models will burgeon elsewhere. JL

Evelyn Chang and Anniek Bao report in CNBC and Ananya Bhattacharya reports in Rest of World:

A former OpenAI researcher is now chief AI scientist for Tencent in China, and wants to build artificial general intelligence. It’s a sign of a shift in the U.S.-China tech race. Highly skilled immigrant tech workers in the U.S. are eyeing relocation to Canada, the U.K., or the Gulf as H-1B visa uncertainty continues to haunt them. Foreign workers, immigration experts, and recruiters say that uncertainty itself is becoming a deterrent to AI work in the US. Tech workers are finding alternatives to the U.S., where they can find lucrative jobs with stable immigration laws. Canada, the European Union, the U.K., and the UAE, among other places, are “competing aggressively” for talent that U.S. companies and universities have historically attracted.

 A former OpenAI researcher is now chief AI scientist for Tencent in China, and wants to build artificial general intelligence.

It’s a sign of a shift in the U.S.-China tech race. Highly skilled immigrant tech workers in the U.S. are eyeing relocation to Canada, the U.K., or the Gulf as H-1B visa uncertainty continues to haunt them.

AI with human-level or above capabilities (AGI) has long been the goal of U.S. companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic and Alphabet, which acquired British startup DeepMind.

Chinese companies rushing to catch up on AI and facing U.S. chip controls have instead focused on ways to use the technology in applications from factories to consumer electronics. Baidu CEO Robin Li previously predicted it would take until at least 2034 to achieve AGI, in contrast to Elon Musk’s 2026 forecast at the time.

But as Chinese companies grab talent from Silicon Valley, they’re increasingly bringing the U.S. vision with them.

“My personal goal is that in China we should establish a long-term AGI organization,” said Tencent Chief AI Scientist Yao Shunyu, who joined the company in the last year after leaving his OpenAI role, in remarks CNBC translated from Mandarin.

Yao was discussing the next stage of AI development on-stage Friday with Tencent’s Cloud executive Dowson Tong at the company’s event in Beijing co-organized with local authorities. A senior Beijing official gave opening remarks. 

Yao said Friday his vision for AGI will require foundational knowledge, products and frontier exploration.

“I don’t think ChatGPT or Claude will be the only super-app,” Yao said, saying untapped potential is in the “trillions of dollars.” Performance of an AI tool is most important, followed by cost, he said, adding that the path forward in China is with smaller AI models and more consistent performance on basic tasks.

His optimism contrasted with growing caution on AI in the U.S.

Anthropic on Thursday warned that frontier models are nearing the point where they can improve themselves without human oversight. The company called for an industry slowdown or pause in new model development to stave off disruption to society.

The San Francisco-based startup earlier this year urged Washington to maintain the U.S. lead over Chinese models. Anthropic has emphasized AI safety from its founding and drawn criticism from rivals that its safety warnings are designed to hobble competition.

Talent competition

Uncertainty over U.S. immigration policies has also encouraged Chinese nationals to find work in their home country, even if the pay may be lower. China is also ramping up investment to attract talent and spend more on “basic research” as the country pursues scientific breakthroughs over the next five years.

Companies compete for talent, whether based in the same country or elsewhere. But among recent high-profile moves, Alibaba reportedly hired Google DeepMind researcher Hao Zhou to support Qwen AI development. Zhou and Alibaba did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Wu Yonghui, vice president of research at Google DeepMind, left to head research at ByteDance Seed from California in February 2025. Startup Moonshot, behind the Kimi AI model, was founded by former Meta AI and Google Brain employee Yang Zhilin.  

On June 8, a U.S. judge ruled Donald Trump’s $100,000 fee on new H-1B visas unenforceable, citing that the government lacked the authority to impose it. The ruling should have offered relief to thousands of immigrant tech workers. However, for many, the fee was only the latest reminder of how quickly the rules governing their lives can change. 

Foreign workers, immigration experts, and recruiters say that uncertainty itself is becoming a deterrent. Tech workers are finding alternatives to the U.S., where they can find lucrative jobs with stable immigration laws. Companies have devised ways to move staff to other countries to bypass U.S. immigration bottlenecks.

H-1B visa registrations for fiscal year 2027, applications for which closed on March 19, fell 38.5% from a year earlier.

“Global talent does not wait for the U.S. to get its policy house in order,” Danielle Goldman, co-founder and CEO of immigration advisory Build Talent Labs, told Rest of World. “Even though the fee has now been struck down, the damage is not just legal, it is psychological and strategic … The policy created confusion, and confusion is enough to stop hiring.” 

Canada, the European Union, the U.K., and the UAE, among other places, are “competing aggressively” for talent that U.S. companies and universities have historically attracted, Goldman said.

“They are building immigration products around certainty, speed, and welcome,” she said. “If the U.S. restores predictability, it can remain the top destination. If not, we should expect talent to move — because talent always has options.”

H-1B talent is leaving the U.S.

A 35-year-old artificial intelligence researcher told Rest of World that she is relocating to the UAE after spending 13 years in the U.S. to gain greater stability in both her professional and personal life. She asked to remain anonymous, fearing backlash from U.S. authorities.

Her spouse – also a researcher — moved to the UAE in January to pursue a promising grant. She wanted to take a one-year sabbatical from her role at a university to spend time with her partner. However, her employer did not immediately agree because it would have to pay the $100,000 fee when she returned.

“This fee has been voided, but the sentiment remains that immigration uncertainty makes such arrangements for researchers difficult,” she said.

On the anonymous employee review app Blind, employees of five U.S. Big Tech companies — Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta, and Nvidia — discussed the June 8 court ruling over 90% less than the September 2025 fee announcement, the company told Rest of World.

The few posts about the ruling that did appear were sarcastic or skeptical, saying things like ‘it’ll get appealed,’ and ‘don’t celebrate yet.’

When a group that reacted so intensely against bad news can’t muster a reaction to good news, that’s a trust signal you won’t find in hiring statistics or court filings.”Sunguk Moon, CEO at TeamBlind

“When a group that reacted so intensely against bad news can’t muster a reaction to good news, that’s a trust signal you won’t find in hiring statistics or court filings,” Sunguk Moon, CEO at TeamBlind, told Rest of World in an e-mail interview.

On Blind, discussions about Microsoft’s Project Move — which temporarily transfers staff to Vancouver, Canada, and later brings them back to the U.S. on L-1 visas — held steady for 18 months straight, Moon said.

“People are still leaving, or still planning to,” Moon said. “People don’t give up their current visa [H-1B] for a complicated multi-year workaround [L-1] casually. And the fact that they’re doing it steadily for a year and a half says they’ve stopped waiting for U.S. policy to improve and started building around it. That kind of behavior doesn’t reverse fast.”

Research from 2020 warned that legal restrictions on high-skilled immigration can lead companies to offshore skilled jobs. American Big Tech firms added 32,000 jobs in India, clocking a three-year record high.

American innovation and immigrants

The U.S. has long been the top destination for international students, with most of them coming from India and China. But restrictive U.S. policies have begun to hit enrollments.

International students continue to value the U.S. for its advanced technology education and robust job market, but immigration policies are increasingly seen as hostile.

“For most Indian tech professionals, a U.S. tech job had always been a dream. It was not just about the paycheck — it was a pathway to overall success. Now that dream no longer exists or has diminished,” Neeti Sharma, CEO of talent solutions firm TeamLease Digital, told Rest of World.

Between 2022 and 2024, over 80,000 Indian H-1B holders lost U.S. tech jobs, each facing a 60-day countdown to leave the country, Sharma added. “The administration’s tightening of immigration stance has also added major uncertainty. Hence, for many new STEM graduates, the American dream does not seem as viable as before,” she said.

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After the announcement of the $100,000 H-1B visa fee, most Indian students in a survey said they were reconsidering their plans to study in the U.S. because of policy-related insecurity. The students did not feel confident in studying in the country despite a clarification that the fee did not apply to them, according to Keystone Education Group

Foreign-born workers make up a significant share of the U.S. STEM workforce. This is why universities, research labs, and advanced tech employers are often pro-skilled-worker immigration.

Since 1990, immigrants have accounted for one-third of U.S. Nobel Prize winners in science and economics and have filed more than a quarter of the roughly 110,000 patents granted annually in the country.

Goldman rejects the idea that immigrant talent and Americans compete against one another. Rather than shutting out foreign talent, America could use it to strengthen its own innovation ecosystem, she said.

“America won the last era of innovation because the world’s best people could come here, study here, stay here, and build here. If we break the ‘stay and build’ part, we should not be surprised when the next generation of companies is built somewhere else,” she said.