Amazon fuels Silicon Valley’s shift as talent shortage drives jobs overseas.

Hiring by Meta, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Netflix, and Google has risen sharply in India in recent months. This trend coincides with the growing scrutiny of the H‑1B visa, often used by tech companies to bring international talent to the U.S. According to Anuj Agrawal, founder and CEO of talent‑advisory firm Zyoin Group, there were about 4,200 open positions at these firms in India as of Feb. 5, with only 15 percent of those roles classified as entry‑level; the remainder are dominated by AI, machine learning, cloud and cybersecurity jobs, which together make up nearly half of the vacancies【report】.

The surge is not a one‑off spike. N. Shivakumar, a Bengaluru‑based human‑resources expert, told Rest of World that the companies added roughly 33,000 workers in India in 2025 – an 18 percent increase over the prior year – and that “this probably has been the strongest growth in several years.” Shivakumar expects an even steeper uptick in 2026, citing the “abundance of mature talent” in India that spans deep‑tech, deep‑learning and AI specialties【report】. The numbers line up with a 2024 University of Pennsylvania study that found firms facing H‑1B rejections typically offset the shortfall by hiring 0.4‑0.9 employees abroad, with the bulk of those roles concentrated in India, China and Canada【report】.

The driver behind the offshore push is the tightening of the H‑1B program under the Trump administration, which raised the filing fee from roughly $5,000 to $100,000 and intensified adjudication scrutiny. Agrawal says the changes “changed the math entirely” for companies that previously relied on the visa pipeline. In 2025, Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft and Apple ranked among the top ten H‑1B recipients, and the majority of those visas were awarded to Indian nationals【report】. With the pool of eligible visas shrinking, multinational firms are leveraging their global footprints to keep R&D pipelines full without incurring the heightened costs and uncertainty of U.S. immigration.

Google’s parent Alphabet illustrates how quickly the offshore shift can translate into physical infrastructure. Bloomberg reported on Feb. 3 that Alphabet is negotiating a lease for up to 2.4 million sq ft in Bengaluru – space that could house as many as 20,000 employees, more than double its current India headcount. Agrawal estimates that over 2,000 of those new positions will focus on machine‑learning, and another 1,000 on AI, requiring expertise in chip design and data science【report】. Bengaluru already hosts Google’s largest workforce outside the United States, and the planned expansion would cement the city’s status as a primary hub for the company’s high‑skill operations.

The broader implication for Silicon Valley is a structural rebalancing of talent flows. Rather than importing engineers, firms are now exporting high‑value jobs to where the talent already resides. This offshoring strategy mitigates visa risk but also reshapes competitive dynamics: Indian tech hubs gain access to projects that were once U.S.‑centric, while U.S. firms may see a gradual dilution of their domestic R&D concentration. As Shivakumar notes, the “abundance of mature talent” in India means that companies can sustain deep‑tech initiatives abroad without sacrificing innovation velocity. If the trend continues, the United States could face a longer‑term talent deficit even after immigration policies relax, while India’s tech ecosystem solidifies its role as a global engine for AI and cloud development.