US President Donald Trump enacted a proclamation that will increase the cost of H1-B visas to an astonishing $100,000 per year, representing the latest effort by his administration to tighten immigration policies.

With Indian companies sponsoring a total of 13,396 H-1B visas, the new regulation would raise H-1B visa fees from approximately $13.4 million to $1.34 billion, equating to around 10percent of the total net profits of TCS, Infosys, HCLTech, Cognizant, and LTIMindtree in FY25. Indian tech firms are anticipated to experience the pressure of the sell-off when trading activities restart on Monday.

Cognizant Technology Solutions shares declined by approximately 4.75 percent on Nasdaq, while Infosys' share price plunged 3.40percent on NYSE.

Nonetheless, US tech firms would also face pressure. NVIDIA, Amazon, Tesla, Meta, Alphabet, and others are anticipated to experience pressure in the long run.

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Stock market analysts suggest that Indian IT and tech firms reliant on H-1B Visas could encounter a talent pool shortage. Nonetheless, certain tech firms in the US such as Apple, Meta, Amazon, Google, NVIDIA, and Tesla might encounter a similar problem, as they will recruit American engineers following Trump's increase in H-1B visa costs.

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In such a scenario, firms will encounter the difficulty of increasing input expenses. They claimed that these American tech professionals demand higher wages than Indians, who are more skilled than the American employees. This could soon pressure the company's margins, and markets might attempt to account for that when Dalal Street reopens on Monday.

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Decoding the impact of Trump's H-1B visa fee hike, Seema Srivastava, Senior Research Analyst at SMC Global Securities says, "The US government’s unexpected decision to impose a $100,000 annual fee for every H-1B visa from September 21, 2025, severely impacts both Indian and US-listed IT companies with significant US operations. Leading Indian IT firms such as TCS, Infosys, Wipro, HCL Technologies, and Cognizant depend on the H-1B program to provide skilled engineers for American client projects, so this fee hike dramatically raises costs and diminishes their competitiveness."