The Rest of World opinion piece argues that tighter U.S. immigration rules could push some of the world’s most promising AI researchers and founders toward other countries, particularly China. The concern is especially important because frontier AI startups are increasingly being founded by young researchers soon after their Ph.D.s rather than after years working at large technology companies. The article points to Moonshot AI founder Yang Zhilin, who studied at Carnegie Mellon and worked with major U.S. technology companies before returning to China to build his company.
The author argues that proposed increases in H-1B and OPT costs, shorter post-graduation visa windows and broader uncertainty around immigration could make the U.S. less attractive to international AI students. Around 419,000 people were working under OPT in 2024, according to the article. Meanwhile, countries including Canada, Australia and France are actively trying to attract researchers who may become less willing to remain in the United States.
China is presented as a particularly significant beneficiary because it has spent years developing programs designed to bring scientific talent back to the country while increasing investment in research. The article also cites the example of materials scientist Omar Yaghi, an immigrant to the U.S. who recently moved from UC Berkeley to Tsinghua University. More broadly, it notes that immigrants have received about 40% of the Nobel Prizes won by Americans in chemistry, medicine and physics since 2000, illustrating how important foreign-born researchers have been to U.S. scientific leadership.
The broader takeaway is that AI talent is becoming a geopolitical resource just like chips and computing power. Export controls can restrict where advanced hardware goes, but governments cannot easily control where talented researchers choose to live and build companies. If the U.S. makes it substantially harder for international AI researchers to stay, competitors can offer them alternatives—and the resulting loss could affect not only American startups but the country's long-term position at the frontier of AI.
