US-based AI startup CEO on H-1B visa price hike: If your company doesn’t value you enough…

Shahriar Tajbakhsh, the Iranian CEO and co-founder of a San Francisco-based AI startup, Metaview, has a message for H-1B visa holders. In a public message shared on the professional networking site LinkedIn, Tajbakhsh addressed the employers of the H-1B workers amid the new $100,000 H-1B visa fee. His remarks came after US President Donald Trump signed an executive order last week to announce the increased fee for new H-1B applications. Tajbakhsh wrote, "If your company doesn’t value you enough to pay the $100k, check out to see if any of our roles might be a fit." Tajbakhsh even promised to provide a yes-or-no decision on all applications within 24 hours. He reframed the fee as a "litmus test for company loyalty" and called the $100,000 fee "a rounding error" compared to the value a team member creates. The company's pitch is seen as a new approach to recruiting talent in the wake of rising immigration costs.

What Shahriar Tajbakhsh said about recruiting H-1B workers

In his LinkedIn post, Tajbakhsh wrote: “If you're on an H-1B visa and your company doesn't value you enough to pay the $100k, check out https://m.careers to see if any of our roles might be a fit.I’m seeing many companies from other countries using this as an opportunity to say, “Come work in country X.” That feels a bit desperate to me. Instead, come work with the Metaview — right here in San Francisco — where $100k is a rounding error compared to the value each member of our team creates. Our team is ready to move fast and get to an offer/no-offer decision on any candidate within 24 hours of first contact (assuming you can give us 4-5 hours of your time for interviews).Tag your H-1B friends on this thread.”
As per his LinkedIn page, Tajbakhsh worked with Palantir for a year, initially as a software engineer and later on as tech lead. Before that, he worked as a software engineer at JP Morgan and Osper, respectively.