‘Stupid’: Indian-origin founder slams US visa rules after Moonshot’s AI win

A blunt comment from Indian-origin tech entrepreneur Ankit Gupta has gone viral on X after Chinese AI startup Moonshot AI released Kimi K3, a model the company says comes close to matching Claude Fable 5 and GPT 5.6 Sol in performance.

Gupta’s remark came in response to a post from Russ Salakhutdinov, who supervised Moonshot co-founder Yang Zhilin’s PhD at Carnegie Mellon University. Salakhutdinov had congratulated Zhilin on the Kimi K3 release, writing that ‘it feels like just yesterday Zhilin was graduating from my lab at CMU,’ and praising him for completing his doctorate in four years with ‘truly fundamental contributions to ML.’

‘The fact that we don’t staple a green card to every AI PhD completed in America is stupid,’ Gupta wrote, arguing it ‘would be more logical to seize their passports and force them to stay.’ He suggested America’s visa policy played a role in Moonshot becoming a Chinese company rather than a US one.

Zhilin worked at Google Brain and Meta Platforms during his PhD years and had the option to pursue postdoctoral work at Stanford University or MIT, and was reportedly courted by Apple as well. He chose instead to return to China to build his own startup.

Other social media users echoed Gupta’s frustration, with one pointing out that the F-1 student visa system ‘is built around employment, not entrepreneurship,’ making it difficult for founders like Zhilin to build a company in the US without additional visa sponsorship.

The discussion comes as the US tightens F-1 visa terms, now limiting stays to four years before an extension must be sought through the USCIS.

Wikimedia Commons/by Dllu