$100,000 Per Day? US Tech Co-Founder's Bold 'Offer' Stuns Amid H-1B Visa Fee Hike Turmoil

(MENAFN- Live Mint) $100,000 per day? A US-based tech co-founder has become the talk of the town after he publicly declared he would gladly pay the staggering amount on a daily basis if it meant hiring the best global talent for his company.

At a time when Donald Trump's $100,000 H1-B visa fee hike has left a lot of foreign workers in the US on edge – San Francisco based firm Metaview founder's comment has taken everyone by surprise. Shahriar Tajbakhsh, co-founder and chief technology officer of Metaview – made the '$100,000 per day' remark while responding to a X user's comment that the H-1B visa fee should be set at $100,000 annually rather than as a one-time payment.

What was the post?

In posts made both on LinkedIn and X in September, Shahriar Tajbakhsh had advertised a list of available positions for H-1B candidates at his company.“If you're on an H-1B visa and your company doesn't value you enough to pay the $100k, check out to see if any of our roles might be a fit,” he had said.

The US based company even put out advertisements in India, stating:“Yes, we still sponsor H-1Bs. $100K won't stop us.”

When Tajbakhsh's post, along with an image of the advertisement resurfaced generating a lot of buzz – one X user commented,“$100K fee should be per year, not one time fee.”

To this, the co-founder replied:“Make it per day. i'll set up a recurring payment.”

Earlier this month, Tesla boss Elon Musk had said that Indian talent had benefitted US immensely India dominates H-1B visa approvals, with over 70% of them approved in 2024.

H-1B talent in US

The US has been an“immense beneficiary” of talent from India, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said, and voiced strong support for the H1B visa programm, cautioning that shutting it down would "actually be very bad” for America.

The US tech billionaire made the remarks in an interview with investor and entrepreneur Nikhil Kamath on his podcast 'People by WTF', released on Sunday.

"Yes, I think America has benefited immensely from talented Indians who have come to America... America has been an immense beneficiary of talent from India,” Musk had said.

Who is Shahriar Tajbakhsh?

Before setting up Metaview, Shahriar Tajbakhsh worked as a software engineer at Morgan Stanley, and Palantir Technologies after that. He completed his graduation in Computer Science from the University College London.

Tajbakhsh - an Iranian-origin entrepreneur and engineer - has consistently argued against penny-pinching when it comes to building tech companies, insisting that talent must come first.

“When you sum up the value created by people's hard work, $100,000 just doesn't matter,” he said in an earlier interview with Business Insider.

“The only way to build anything meaningful that changes people's lives is to have a world-class team. Trying to save money on talent is the most irresponsible thing a founder could possibly do,” he told the outlet.

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