Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on Monday commented on President Donald Trump’s decision to increase the cost of hiring overseas workers on visas.

Trump on Friday announced that he would raise the fee for an H-1B visa to $100,000, leaving companies scrambling. Employers now must have documentation of the payment prior to filing an H-1B petition on behalf of a worker. Applicants will have their petitions restricted for 12 months until the payment is made, according to the White House.

Huang and Altman responded to the changes in an interview with CNBC’s Jon Fortt, where the two executives announced that Nvidia will invest $100 billion in OpenAI as the artificial intelligence lab sets out to build hundreds of billions of dollars-worth of data centers based around the chipmaker’s AI processors.

“We want all the brightest minds to come to the U.S. and remember immigration is the foundation of the American Dream,” Huang said Monday. “We represent the American Dream. And so I think immigration is really important to our company and is really important to our nation’s future, and I’m glad to see President Trump making the moves he’s making.”

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also expressed a positive outlook on Trump’s changes.

“We need to get the smartest people in the country, and streamlining that process and also sort of outlining financial incentives seems good to me,” Altman said.

The new $100,000 fee would be a seismic shift for U.S. technology and finance sectors, which rely on the H-1B program for highly skilled immigrants, particularly from India and China. Those two countries accounted for 71% and 11.7% of visa holders last year, respectively.

Those who already have H-1B visas and are located outside the U.S. will not be required to pay the fee in order to re-enter. Many employers use H-1B workers to fill the gaps in these highly technical roles that are not found within the American labor supply. 

— CNBC tech reporter Annie Palmer contributed to this report.

WATCH: Watch CNBC’s full interview with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and OpenAI leaders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman

President Donald Trump raised the fee for an H-1B visa to $100,000 on Friday, leaving companies scrambling to respond.

With many left wondering whether their careers will remain in tact, here’s a breakdown of the new H-1B fees:

What did Trump change?

As of Sunday, H-1B visa applications will require a $100,000 payment. Previously, visa fees ranged from $2,000 to $5,000 per application, depending on the size of the company.

Employers now must have documentation of the payment prior to filing an H-1B petition on behalf of a worker. Applicants will have their petitions restricted for 12 months until the payment is made, according to the White House.

Who does this impact?

The fee will only be applied to new H-1B applicants, not renewals or current visa holders, according to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. The fee will be implemented in the upcoming lottery cycle.

Those who already have H-1B visas and are located outside the U.S. will not be required to pay the fee in order to re-enter.

Leavitt also clarified that the $100,000 is a one-time payment and not an annual charge.

Exceptions can be made to any immigrant whose employment is deemed essential in the national interest by the Secretary of Homeland Security and does not pose a threat to the security or welfare of the U.S.

Employees with B visas who have start dates prior to October 2026 will also receive additional guidance in order to prevent using those temporary business visas as a workaround for H-1B visas.

Who are these workers and why are they needed?

H-1B visas allows highly skilled foreign professionals to work in specialty occupations that generally require at least a bachelor’s degree to fulfill the role. Jobs in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, usually qualify.

Many employers use H-1B workers to fill the gaps in these highly technical roles that are not found within the American labor supply.

Companies in the tech and finance sectors rely heavily on these specially-skilled immigrants, particularly from India and China, which accounted for 71% and 11.7% of visa holders last year, respectively.

How many H-1B visas does the tech industry use every year?

The current annual cap for H-1B visas is 65,000, along with an additional 20,000 visas for foreign professionals with a master’s degree or doctorate from a U.S. institution. A lottery system is used to select additional petitions if demand exceeds the cap.

Since 2012, about 60% or more of approved H-1B workers had computer-related jobs, according to Pew Research.

Amazon was the top employer for H-1B holders in the fiscal year 2025, sponsoring over 10,000 applicants by the end of June, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Microsoft and Meta had over 5,000 each, while Apple and Google rounded out the top six with over 4,000 approvals.

WATCH: CoreWeave CEO on H-1B visas: Additional fee is ‘sand in the gears’ for access to talent

Nvidia will invest $100 billion in OpenAI as the artificial intelligence lab sets out to build hundreds of billions of dollars in data centers based around the chipmaker’s AI processors, the companies said on Monday.

OpenAI plans to build and deploy Nvidia systems that require 10 gigawatts of power, the companies said on Monday. A gigawatt is a measure of power that is increasingly being used to describe the biggest clusters of AI chips.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told CNBC’s Jon Fortt in an interview in San Jose, California, that the 10 gigawatts is equal to between 4 million and 5 million graphics processing units (GPUs), which is what the company will ship in total this year and “twice as much as last year.”

“This is a giant project,” Huang said in the interview, alongside OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, the company’s president.

Nvidia’s first investment of $10 billion will be deployed when the first gigawatt is completed, according to a person familiar with the matter. Investments will be made at then-current valuations, said the person, who declined to be named because the details are private.

Nvidia stock rose almost 4% during on Monday, instantly adding roughly $170 billion in value to the company’s market cap, which now sits close to $4.5 trillion.

The partnership, which Huang described as “monumental in size,” highlights the intimate link between OpenAI and Nvidia, two of the biggest drivers of the recent AI boom. Demand for Nvidia’s GPUs started picking up when OpenAI first released ChatGPT in 2022, and OpenAI still relies GPUs to develop its software and deploy it to users.

“Nvidia invests $100 billion in OpenAI, which then OpenAI turns back and gives it back to Nvidia,” Bryn Talkington, managing partner at Requisite Capital Management, told CNBC after the announcement. “I feel like this is going to be very virtuous for Jensen.”

It further signals the magnitude of Nvidia technology that OpenAI will need to develop next-generation AI that can do more than its current models. OpenAI was already in need of an increasing number of chips to serve its users. The company said it had 700 million active weekly users.

“You should expect a lot from us in the coming months,” Altman said in the interview. “There are three things that OpenAI has to do well: we have to do great AI research, we have to make these products people want to use, and we have to figure out how to do this unprecedented infrastructure challenge.”

The companies said the investment will be deployed “progressively” as the infrastructure is built and that Nvidia would be a “preferred” supplier for OpenAI for chips and networking gear. Nvidia dominates the market for AI chips, but faces increased competition from Advanced Micro Devices and cloud providers which are developing their own chips and systems to tie them together.

In August, Huang told investors on an earnings call that building one gigawatt of data center capacity costs between $50 billion and $60 billion, of which about $35 billion of that is for Nvidia chips and systems.

Nvidia and OpenAI said that the first phase of the latest investment will come online in the second half of 2026, using Nvidia’s next-generation Vera Rubin systems.

Nvidia’s investment comes after a roster of investors valued OpenAI at $500 billion in a recent secondary round. Microsoft was one of OpenAI’s early investors, and has a strategic partnership to integrate OpenAI models into its cloud service, Azure, and Microsoft Office. Other OpenAI investors include SoftBank and Thrive Capital.

The companies said on Monday that the partnership will compliment the infrastructure work it is doing with Microsoft, Oracle, SoftBank and the Stargate project.

Altman referred to Nvidia and Microsoft as “passive” investors and two of the company’s “most critical partners” in the CNBC interview.

Huang said Nvidia’s investment is “additive to everything that’s been announced and contracted.” He indicated to CNBC that it’s in addition to anything the company has told Wall Street about its financial expectations.

While this investment dwarfs Nvidia’s prior commitments, the chipmaker has been opening its wallet of late to put funds in many companies in and around the industry.

Last week, Nvidia said it’s taken a $5 billion stake in Intel and announced that the two companies will collaborate on AI processors. Nvidia also said it invested close to $700 million in U.K. data center startup Nscale. And CNBC reported on Thursday that the company spent over $900 million to hire Enfabrica CEO Rochan Sankar and other employees at the AI startup, and to license the company’s technology.

WATCH: Nvidia-OpenAI partnership theme seems to be shortage of compute