- President Donald Trump's executive order raises new H-1B visa fees to $100,000.
- Tech firms have relied on H-1B visas to hire skilled foreign workers, like engineers.
- These are the top companies that will be hit hardest by the H-1B visa fee hike.
An executive order signed by President Donald Trump late Friday, hiking H-1B visa application fees to $100,000, sent Silicon Valley into a tailspin.
H-1B visas have become a mainstay of the tech industry, allowing companies to hire highly-skilled workers from abroad, including engineers.
Affected tech workers and corporate lawyers initially scrambled to decipher the new policies, with companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta telling employees on H-1B visas to either stay in the US or return from abroad within 24 hours.
The Trump administration subsequently clarified that the fees would only apply to new applicants, not renewals or current H-1B holders.
The Trump administration said it implemented the changes to prevent system "abuses" and to encourage companies to train American workers.
Some applauded the new policy, including Netflix cofounder Reed Hastings, who said it could mean the end of the lottery system, given H-1Bs are capped at 85,000 workers annually. Others worried cash-strapped startups would be most severely affected, or that the executive order could counterintuitively push more jobs out of the country.
Business Insider examined publicly available data from the Department of Labor and US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to track which tech companies had the most H-1B visa approvals in 2025.
Bloomberg, Intel, and Nvidia declined to comment. The rest of the companies on this list did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.
Amazon
Total certified H-1B approvals: 15,043
Total employees worldwide: 1,556,000
Microsoft
Total certified H-1B approvals: 6,043
Total employees worldwide: 228,000
Meta
Total certified H-1B approvals: 5,124
Total employees worldwide: 74,067
Alphabet
Total certified H-1B approvals: 4,319
Total employees worldwide: 183,323
Apple
Total certified H-1B approvals: 4,253
Total employees worldwide: 164,000
Oracle
Total certified H-1B approvals: 2,135
Total employees worldwide: 162,000
Intel
Total certified H-1B approvals: 1,707
Total employees worldwide: 108,900
IBM
Total certified H-1B approvals: 1,600
Total employees worldwide: 270,300
Cisco
Total certified H-1B approvals: 1,576
Total employees worldwide: 86,200
Nvidia
Total certified H-1B approvals: 1,473
Total employees worldwide: 36,000
ByteDance
Total certified H-1B approvals: 1,360
Total employees worldwide: 150,000
Salesforce
Total certified H-1B approvals: 1,137
Total employees worldwide: 76,453
Qualcomm
Total certified H-1B approvals: 1,039
Total employees worldwide: 49,000
Intuit
Total certified H-1B approvals: 742
Total employees worldwide: 18,200
Tesla
Total certified H-1B approvals: 728
Total employees worldwide: 125,665
PayPal
Total certified H-1B approvals: 694
Total employees worldwide: 24,400
Uber
Total certified H-1B approvals: 671
Total employees worldwide: 31,100
Adobe
Total certified H-1B approvals: 562
Total employees worldwide: 30,709
Bloomberg
Total certified H-1B approvals: 560
Total employees worldwide: 26,000
ServiceNow
Total certified H-1B approvals: 517
Total employees worldwide: 26,293
