Changes to an all-important visa for corporate America leave businesses and workers scrambling

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Welcome back to our Sunday edition, where we round up some of our top stories and take you inside our newsroom. Corporate America was thrown into chaos Friday night. The Trump administration issued a surprise executive order that would implement a new $100,000 fee for H-1B visa holders. Stakeholders (and their lawyers) immediately scrambled to understand who exactly it would impact.

Tech and finance companies rushed to tell their employees on these visas to stay in the US. The worry was Trump’s order would make it far more expensive — and potentially impossible — for them to return if they traveled abroad. Less than 24 hours later, a White House official said that the fee would only apply to new applicants, not current H-1B visa holders.

Still, chaos and confusion persist. And the $100k fee for new applicants alone stands to upend the hiring calculus on workers for many companies. The majority of H-1B applications are for professional, scientific, and technical services. Business Insider reporters around the world have been all over this big story. Stay tuned for more developments.

On the agenda today:

• From burnout to AI fears to financial distress, six job seekers discussed their experiences in a group chat.
• The Amex Platinum Card’s $200 annual fee increase is steep — but not as divisive as Chase Sapphire Reserve’s.
• The decline of nepo homebuyers is an ominous sign for us all.
• Consulting could be headed for a shift that’ll make it even harder to scale its career ladder.

But first: What’s happening at xAI?

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This week’s dispatch

A big xAI shakeup

It’s been quite a month for Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence venture xAI.

The company has undergone mass layoffs and significant leadership changes. At one point, xAI told workers in an all-hands meeting that the layoffs were over. Then it fired even more people. And now it has a college student at the helm of its data annotation team, which is tasked with training its Grok chatbot.

My colleague Grace Kay, a correspondent on BI’s enterprise desk, has uncovered it all in recent weeks. I sat down with her to discuss the recent turmoil at xAI.

What’s the mood inside the company right now?

From the people I’ve spoken with, morale is low and there’s a high level of uncertainty. One worker who survived the layoffs said the last round has made it difficult for them to trust leadership or their job security.

What’s been the most surprising development to you amid the upheaval?

The leadership shakeup has stood out. The data annotation team’s former leader had spent more than a decade at Tesla, where he helped manage data annotation for Autopilot. He joined xAI just a month after Musk officially launched the company. What surprised me the most was that they replaced him with Diego Pasini, a college student whom no one I’d talked to at xAI really knew much about.

You’ve covered Elon’s empire for years. How would you compare his leadership style at xAI to how he runs Tesla and his other companies?

There are a lot of commonalities. Even aspects of the layoffs at xAI echoed things I’ve seen at Tesla, including asking workers to identify key workers ahead of the cuts and the way workers were suddenly locked out of Slack. What’s different is Musk’s visibility. At xAI, workers have been far removed from him. That may be shifting. He’s been tweeting more about Grok’s capabilities, and some workers said they felt like the layoffs are a sign he’s focusing more on the company.

Why do you think Elon has shown a willingness to put young and relatively inexperienced people into such powerful positions?

Musk has a track record of this. From what I’ve seen, it seems like he values loyalty and alignment with his vision, sometimes even over experience. He also tends to move fast and favors people who can adapt quickly and aren’t too hindered by a more traditional corporate mindset.

Inside a group chat for job seekers

Over the past year, BI’s Jacob Zinkula has spoken with dozens of Americans struggling to find work. Many express how stressful, emotionally draining, and isolating the job search process has been.

Jacob invited six job seekers from around the country to a group chat. Over the past fourmonths, they shared how they’re coping with a job market that feels broken.

Here are some highlights.

The Amex Platinum Card gets a makeover

The internet lost its mind when Chase raised the annual fee on its Sapphire Reserve card a few months ago from $550 to $795. American Express just raised the annual fee on its Platinum Card by $200, to $895, but the world has kept spinning.

That’s probably because Amex cardholders think the new Platinum Card comes with enough perks — including credits at Resy, Lululemon, and Oura — to justify the price hike.

The value depends on where you shop, though.

Also read:

The new Amex Platinum card will cost $895 a year. Here’s what it gets you.

With(out) a little help from my parents

Fewer and fewer first-time homebuyers are getting help from their parents. In 2024, only a quarter of first-time buyers got parental assistance, down from 30% the past three decades.

That may sound encouraging for the rest of us — after all, fewer nepo buyers might mean less competition. In reality, their thinning ranks may be yet another sign that something’s amiss with the housing market.

Flying solo.

Culling of the herd

Ascending to partner as a consultant has never been easy, but it might be getting a lot harder. Thanks to the tightening of performance standards and the adoption of AI, consulting looks to be on the edge of a shift that could reshape the profession.

No one knows how exactly it’ll happen, though. The transformation could result in fewer entry-level and senior roles, making it harder for young people trying to rise through the ranks, analysts told BI.

It’s already becoming visible.

This week’s quote:

“I would say my comment is that he’s not worth my time to comment.”

— Hedge-fund founder Eric Jackson when asked by BI’s Samuel O’Brient if he had an opinion on Martin Shkreli’s short bet on Opendoor.

Inside the secretive world of America’s AI data centers

The explosion of AI has seen hundreds of water- and power-hungry farms sprout up across the US. Take a look at BI’s deep dive into the true cost of data centers, who owns them, and what it’s like to live in their shadow.

More of this week’s top reads:

• Inside the sneaky rise of “ghost tickets.”
• Ukraine says Russia’s new jet-powered attack drone is full of foreign parts and immune to electronic warfare.
• Exclusive: The billion-dollar rivalry over “ChatGPT for doctors” just got nastier with dueling lawsuits.
• How Trump’s quarterly earnings shake-up could disrupt the white-collar ecosystem.
• Defense tech’s hottest new weapon: company swag.

• Meta’s $800 computer glasses are here, and they’re very cool. You may even want to buy them.

  The BI Today team: Steve Russolillo, chief news editor, in New York. Lisa Ryan, executive editor, in New York. Dan DeFrancesco, deputy editor and anchor, in New York. Akin Oyedele, deputy editor, in New York. Grace Lett, editor, in New York. Amanda Yen, associate editor, in New York.

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