TCS to scale back new H-1Bs? Here’s what CEO K Krithivasan said about future US hiring

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is shifting its strategy around H-1B visa hiring in the United States, with a renewed focus on strengthening its local talent base, CEO K Krithivasan said. He emphasised that while H-1B visas are no longer the company’s primary deployment tool, TCS will continue to sponsor them for select roles, particularly for renewals and amendments.

“We have enough people on H-1 already in the US. I don’t think we would be looking for adding to that count anytime now,” he said.

TCS is the largest employer of H-1B visa holders in the US, having hired 98,259 applicants between 2009 and 2025, according to data. The company hired 5,505 H-1B applicants in 2025 alone, ahead of tech giants such as Microsoft, Meta, Apple and Google.

Krithivasan said the company’s strategy has always been to rotate employees between geographies rather than keep them on long-term H-1B assignments.

“Our original plan was always to send people on H-1 with the intention of bringing them back and rotating them. So it continued to focus on bringing back at the end of the programmes, or rotating them with locals,” he said, adding that renewal decisions would be taken “at the appropriate time”.

“We are looking to increase our local participation.”

He said TCS has a high proportion of local employees across its operations in Latin America, the Middle East and Asia-Pacific, and is working to expand that model further in the US and Europe.

“We are also moving to see how the new AI engagements are going to be done. They are going to require much closer collaborations with our clients, in terms of understanding the requirements and in terms of doing the build,” he added.

Last week, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told employees the company would continue sponsoring H-1B visas despite the recent US government move to impose a $100,000 fee for new applications.

In an internal memo, Huang said legal immigration remains “essential” for America’s leadership in technology and innovation.

“The miracle of Nvidia — built by all of you, and by brilliant colleagues around the world — would not be possible without immigration,” he said.

Nvidia, one of the largest H-1B sponsors in the US with about 1,500 approvals in 2025, said it would cover all related visa costs.

Last month, US President Donald Trump announced the new $100,000 annual fee for fresh H-1B applications to encourage domestic hiring and curb alleged visa “abuses”. The White House later clarified that the rule, which took effect on September 21, would not apply to renewals or existing visa holders.