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Even as Silicon Valley giants cut jobs like a hot knife through butter, the competition among startups for the best global talent remains as fierce as ever. And with critical skills, particularly in artificial intelligence, still in short supply, startups like OpenAI and Anthropic rely on the H-1B visa program to bring in skillful foreign workers and secure their place in the race.
2025-03-24
For a startup to hire a foreign worker, it sponsors their petition for an H-1B visa, which lets them work in the US for up to six years. The job candidate is entered into a lottery for one of 85,000 visas. Despite challenges, including a demand for visas that has outstripped supply and ongoing discussions about reforms, startups continue to recruit talent abroad through this Rube Goldberg system to gain a competitive edge.
Using data from the Department of Labor and US Citizenship and Immigration Services, we ranked the startup employers that filed the most H-1B requests during the 2024 government fiscal year. The data comes from applications submitted by businesses seeking to sponsor workers' visas.
Here are the startups leading the charge, ranked by their number of filings.
Ripple: provides crypto infrastructure for financial services
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse.Stephen McCarthy/Getty Images
Headquarters: San Francisco
Total funding: $325 million, according to PitchBook
Total certified H-1B filings: 26
Grammarly: writing assistant that edits and corrects language
Grammarly CEO Shishir Mehrotra.Coda
Headquarters: San Francisco
Total funding: $400 million, according to PitchBook
Total certified H-1B filings: 28
Plaid: collects and shares personal financial info with apps and other services
Plaid CEO Zach Perret.Cody Glenn/Sportsfile for Web Summit via Getty Images
Headquarters: San Francisco
Total funding: $734 million, according to the company
Total certified H-1B filings: 28
Carta: helps businesses track ownership and manage equity plans
Carta CEO Henry Ward.Carta
Headquarters: San Francisco
Total funding: $1.19 billion, according to PitchBook
Total certified H-1B filings: 30
Thumbtack: allows users to search for and hire local service providers
Thumbtack CEO Marco Zappacosta.Thumbtack
Headquarters: San Francisco
Total funding: More than $500 million, according to the company
Total certified H-1B filings: 31
X Corp.: social media platform
X Corp. owner Elon Musk.Andrew Harnik/Getty Image
Headquarters: San Francisco
Total funding: Elon Musk took X private at a purchase price of $44 billion in 2022.
Total certified H-1B filings: 32
Anthropic: develops foundation AI models aimed at business users
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei.Chesnot/Getty Images
Headquarters: San Francisco
Total funding: More than $17 billion, according to the company
Total certified H-1B filings: 35
Zipline: develops and operates drone delivery fleets
Zipline CEO Keller Rinaudo Cliffton.Taylor Hill/Getty Images
Headquarters: South San Francisco, California
Total funding: $1.23 billion, according to PitchBook
Total certified H-1B filings: 35
Turo: car rental marketplace
Turo CEO Andre Haddad.Lea Suzuki/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images
Headquarters: San Francisco
Total funding: $527 million, according to the company
Total certified H-1B filings: 36
Scale AI: data labeling company helping apps and models scale
Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang.Scale AI
Headquarters: San Francisco
Total funding: $1.6 billion, according to PitchBook
Total certified H-1B filings: 42
Gusto: payroll and HR solution for small businesses
Gusto CEO Joshua Reeves.Gusto
Headquarters: San Francisco
Total funding: $751 million, according to PitchBook
Total certified H-1B filings: 48
Verkada: cloud-managed security cameras
Verkada CEO Filip Kaliszan.Verkada
Headquarters: San Mateo, California
Total funding: $700 million, according to the company
Total certified H-1B filings: 52
Nuro: develops self-driving tech for robotaxis and delivery vehicles
Nuro CEO Jiajun Zhu.Nuro
Headquarters: Mountain View, California
Total funding: More than $2 billion, according to the company
Total certified H-1B filings: 59
Cohesity: develops software for securing and managing cloud data
Cohesity CEO Sanjay Poonen.Cohesity
Headquarters: San Jose, California
Total funding: $1.8 billion, according to the company
Total certified H-1B filings: 61
OpenAI: develops cutting-edge AI models and apps like ChatGPT
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.picture alliance/dpa/picture alliance via Getty Images
Headquarters: San Francisco
Total funding: $63.92 billion, according to PitchBook
Total certified H-1B filings: 74
Chime: provides fee-free mobile banking services
Chime CEO Chris Britt.Kimberly White/Getty Images
Headquarters: San Francisco
Total funding: $2.65 billion, according to PitchBook
Total certified H-1B filings: 101
Stripe: provides financial infrastructure for businesses
Stripe CEO Patrick Collison.Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for WIRED
Headquarters: San Francisco and Dublin
Total funding: $8.73 billion, according to PitchBook
Total certified H-1B filings: 265
Databricks: cloud-based platform to help enterprises build, scale, and govern data
Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi.Ali Ghodsi
Headquarters: San Francisco
Total funding: More than $14 billion, according to the company
Total certified H-1B filings: 283
ByteDance: Chinese internet technology company
Headquarters: Beijing
Total funding: $18.95 billion, according to PitchBook
Total certified H-1B filings: 997
TikTok: video-based social media platform
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew.Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
Headquarters: Los Angeles and Singapore
Total funding: TikTok is a subsidiary of ByteDance, which has raised $18.95 billion in venture capital, according to PitchBook.
Total certified H-1B filings: 614
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Melia Robinson is a reporter at Business Insider covering how lawyers are changing how they work and bill in the age of artificial intelligence — and about the tech companies racing to serve them.Melia first joined Business Insider in 2013. She lives in New York City.
