US visa policy is costing the country the small pool of people who can start a frontier AI lab, a group that is more than two-thirds foreign, argues Lex Zhao, a managing partner at One Way Ventures, in Rest of World. He points to a proposed $100,000 charge on Optional Practical Training, which let roughly 419,000 graduates work in the US in 2024, a new H-1B fee, and a post-graduation grace period trimmed to 30 days from 60. His example is Yang Zhilin, who earned a doctorate at Carnegie Mellon, spent internships at Google and Meta, had an Apple offer in hand, and went home to build Moonshot AI. Zhao wants a federal office that hands promising international AI students a long-term visa and $10M, modeled on the Pentagon lending arm that finances national-security technology.
