Tag Archives: Elon Musk

H-1B visa fee hike: Beneficiaries like Musk, Nadella, Pichai silent

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**H-1B Visa Fee Hike: Beneficiaries Like Musk, Nadella, Pichai Remain Silent**

*By Dwaipayan Roy | Sep 21, 2025, 06:25 PM*

Silicon Valley’s tech giants, including Elon Musk, Sundar Pichai, and Satya Nadella, have remained notably silent following the Trump administration’s recent announcement of a new $100,000 fee on H-1B visa petitions. This silence is particularly surprising given Elon Musk’s previously strong opposition to changes in the H-1B visa system.

**Elon Musk’s Previous Stance on H-1B Visa Changes**

Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, has been vocal about his concerns regarding modifications to the H-1B visa program. In December, Musk posted on X (formerly Twitter) highlighting that many critical employees who helped build SpaceX, Tesla, and other successful tech companies are here on H-1B visas. He even went so far as to threaten to “go to war” over changes affecting this visa category.

**Details of the New H-1B Visa Fee**

The newly signed rules by President Trump introduce a hefty $100,000 fee for H-1B visa petitions. According to the administration, this measure is intended to ensure that only “extraordinarily skilled” individuals are permitted to enter the United States, preventing companies from replacing American workers with foreign professionals. The policy is expected to heavily impact Indian tech workers, who comprise approximately 71% of all H-1B visa holders.

**Clarifications on the Fee**

The administration has clarified that the new rule applies solely to new visa petitions and does not affect existing H-1B visa holders who are re-entering the U.S. White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt explained on X that the $100,000 charge “is NOT an annual fee. It’s a one-time fee that applies only to the petition.” Here, a petition refers to a company’s formal request to bring a skilled worker from another country into the United States.

As this major policy change unfolds, the silence from leading tech beneficiaries raises questions about the future landscape of skilled immigration in the U.S. and its impact on the technology sector.
https://www.newsbytesapp.com/news/business/h-1b-visa-s-100-000-fee-what-are-silicon-valley-ceos-saying/story

Grok 4 Fast arrives as cheaper alternative to xAI’s Grok-4

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**Next Article: Grok 4 Fast Arrives as Cheaper Alternative to xAI’s Grok-4**
*By Dwaipayan Roy | Sep 20, 2025, 06:46 PM*

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Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence (AI) company, xAI, has unveiled a new model called **Grok 4 Fast**, offering a more affordable alternative to the existing Grok 4. Designed for both enterprise and consumer use cases, this innovative system stands out by combining reasoning and non-reasoning tasks within a single framework, delivering high efficiency and versatility.

### Cost Efficiency

Grok 4 Fast provides a significantly better cost-to-performance ratio compared to its predecessor. It uses approximately **40% fewer “thinking tokens”** than Grok 4 while maintaining similar accuracy across multiple benchmarks. An independent review by Artificial Analysis highlighted that Grok 4 Fast achieves comparable results to Grok 4 at up to **98% less cost**, making it a highly economical option for users.

### Benchmark Performance

The model has demonstrated impressive performance on a range of industry-standard benchmarks:

– **85.7%** on GPQA Diamond
– **92%** on AIME 2025
– **93.3%** on HMMT 2025

These scores are close to those of Grok 4. Additionally, Grok 4 Fast showed improvements in code execution and search-based tasks, achieving a **95% pass rate on SimpleQA** and around **74% on X Bench Deepsearch**.

### Key Features

– **Massive Context Window:** Grok 4 Fast supports a two million token context window, enabling it to process very large inputs efficiently.
– **Reinforcement Learning:** The model was trained using reinforcement learning techniques to boost efficiency.
– **Unified Framework:** Unlike previous versions that required separate reasoning and non-reasoning models, Grok 4 Fast integrates both into a single system. This integration reduces latency and lowers operational costs significantly.

### Availability and Pricing

Grok 4 Fast is available in two versions: **grok-4-fast-reasoning** and **grok-4-fast-non-reasoning**, both supporting the extensive two million token limit.

Pricing starts at **$0.20 per million input tokens** for smaller workloads, with rates increasing based on token usage. This pricing structure makes Grok 4 Fast an ideal choice for large projects or anyone seeking a fast, affordable AI solution without sacrificing accuracy.

Users can access Grok 4 Fast through xAI’s website, mobile applications, OpenRouter, and the Vercel AI Gateway. Some platforms offer free access during the launch period.

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With its blend of cost-efficiency, robust performance, and large context capacity, Grok 4 Fast positions itself as a compelling option in the evolving AI landscape.
https://www.newsbytesapp.com/news/science/elon-musk-s-xai-launches-grok-4-fast-check-features-pricing/story