In the upcoming year, Arko Chattopadhyay, the CEO and cofounder of Pipeshift, an AI business situated in the Bay Area, plans to add up to ten staff members.

Those intentions have not been altered by the recent increase in the cost of an H-1B visa, Chattopadhyay, who is professionally known as Arko C, told Business Insider.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Friday that increased the application fee for an H-1B visa to $100,000. The tech sector now relies heavily on the visa program, which enables businesses to recruit highly qualified foreign workers, such as engineers.

Some founders warned that the $100,000 price tag would strangle the startup ecosystem and make it more difficult for them to compete with larger tech businesses for talent, which shocked tech circles.

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However, Arko C, who is also a member of the Forbes Technology Council, told BI that he may use alternative channels to get top talent or find the people he needs in the United States.

“We should be able to get local talent, or we can hire them offshore through a subsidy structure as a remote worker,” stated the CEO of Pipeshift.  “The best AI talent is in the US at the moment,” he stated.

With support from Y Combinator, Pipeshift was established in 2024 and raised $2.5 million in a seed fundraising round this January.  The startup gives businesses a platform to create and use open-source AI models.

According to him, seven of Pipeshift’s staff members are situated in India, where Arko C hails from, while the remaining four are headquartered in the Bay Area.

Arko C told BI that Y Combinator provided funding for his two co-founders to be in the US on O-1 visas.

For a maximum of three years, immigrants with “extraordinary ability” can work in the US with an O-1 visa.  Candidates must demonstrate “sustained national or international acclaim” in the arts, business, education, sports, or sciences.  According to Arko C, the majority of researchers and founders use these visas to travel.

Two US workers are being hired by Pipeshift: one has a green card, while the other is enrolled in the Optional Practical Training (OPT) program, which permits foreign students to work for a year following graduation (or up to three years if they are in STEM).  It is a typical route taken by foreign students to begin their studies in the United States.

Arko C stated that the OPT candidate may apply for an O-1 visa if they wanted to keep him after the one-year term.  As a researcher working for a college research professor who was “one of the pioneers of the AI world,” the particular candidate would probably have relevant reference letters and citations.

According to Arko C, it would be difficult for the majority of recent graduates to accumulate the credentials necessary to demonstrate their extraordinary talent, particularly for developers or software engineers who are unlikely to produce academic publications that count toward O-1 certification.

By the end of 2025, the founder hoped to bring one “really talented engineer” from Chennai, India, to the United States.

According to Arko C, it would have been beneficial to introduce the engineer to Bay Area tech circles and have the chance to collaborate with him face-to-face.  However, the company was reconsidering whether it was appropriate to spend the $100,000 it would suddenly need after the executive order was made public.

Pipeshift would probably hold off on making the investment for a year until “he’s better skilled, he’s more experienced,” according to Arko C.  However, he continued, the increased expenses are affordable for outstanding people.

“I don’t believe a $100,000 will have a significant impact on us following a Series A or Series B if we are forced to take that course.  When you consider all of the payments and salary you oversee at that time, that is insignificant.

Because they lack the cash flow or reserve funds necessary to pay the higher price, tech startups will be the ones who suffer the most from this executive order, according to Arko C.

However, he doesn’t think the impact on startups will be as severe as some people think.  According to him, a post-Series A venture-backed company could afford to pay for excellent talent because startups only hire a certain number of individuals.

“No more than five or six individuals are hired by seed stage companies.  Two or three of the five or six persons you hire are merely founders.  You can likely get graduates for one or two of them, as well as those who are already here or on OPT.

According to him, the H-1B fee increase would only guarantee that the most skilled individuals could access the program, and he does not believe it would harm the US talent stream overall.

“The best talent and the majority of the tech world do not run on H-1B alone,” he added, adding that many talented people enter the country on L-1 visas, which are used for internal transfers inside companies.

“The US won’t lose out on good quality AI talent because there’s no better place in the world that has this density of talent, speed of development in AI, customer discovery in AI, and venture capital and money flowing in.”