A growing number of India's top AI engineers are choosing domestic startups over jobs at U.S. tech giants, according to Rest of World, flipping the decades-old assumption that a big tech offer was the obvious career win. Recruiters say AI-driven layoffs and H-1B unpredictability have stripped away the stability that once made the move to Silicon Valley worth it, leaving engineers to weigh visa risk and family upheaval as real costs. The homegrown firms pay only 50% to 75% of what the giants offer, but candidates are taking the cut for earlier entry, equity, and performance-linked upside. The pull is sharpened by a thin talent pool, with OpenAI and Anthropic now building engineering teams in India, where staffing firm TeamLease Digital counts roughly only one qualified engineer for every ten open generative-AI roles.
