Good day. Ezra Gershanok, chief executive and co-founder of subleasing-marketplace Ohana, said he doesn’t expect to sponsor H-1B visas now that the petition fee jumped to $100,000 under President Trump’s new rules. He will hire contractors abroad instead.

“If the intended purpose is to have more domestic hiring, that is not going to be the case for us,” Gershanok said.

Founders of venture-backed U.S. startups are rethinking hiring plans following the imposition of the whopping new fee on H-1B visa petitions. Some founders expect to bring on foreign workers remotely or to rely more on international offices. Among well-funded companies, some aren’t ruling out paying the high fee in rare cases.

Venture investors worry that immigration roadblocks will deter foreigners from starting companies in the U.S. and otherwise push global talent overseas. Easing skilled immigration has long been a big part of the venture market’s agenda.

Ohana, which has raised $6 million in venture funding, now employs 11 people. Six are based in New York, including a new hire in a business development role who is a U.K. citizen and won the H-1B lottery earlier this year, Gershanok said.

The other five people at Ohana are international contractors working in South Africa and Portugal. Hiring in New York is already too expensive, Gershanok said. “I wish I could hire in the U.S., but I can’t at this cost,” he said.

On Friday, President Trump signed an executive order that requires a $100,000 payment to accompany any new H-1B visa petition, representing a huge jump in costs, up from a few thousand dollars. The new fee was placed to curb abuse in an H-1B system that has been “deliberately exploited to replace, rather than supplement, American workers with lower-paid, lower-skilled labor,” the executive order read.

Read the full article.

And now on to the news...

Power play. Nvidia and OpenAI, two U.S. giants powering America’s race for AI superintelligence, outlined an expansive partnership Monday, including plans for an enormous data center buildout and a $100 billion investment by the chip maker into the startup. The deal announced Monday will allow OpenAI to build and deploy at least 10 gigawatts of Nvidia systems for its artificial-intelligence data centers to train and run its next generation of models. That amount of electricity is roughly comparable to what is produced by more than four Hoover Dams or the power consumed by eight million homes. 

• More: How Nvidia Is Backstopping America’s AI Boom

General Catalyst is poised to become the first U.S. venture-capital firm to own a hospital system with its pending investment in Summa Health in Akron, Ohio. The deal offers a road map the firm plans to follow in tackling other areas, from climate change to national defense, Chief Executive Hemant Taneja said. “We’re at a moment in time where you’ve got these two megatrends: Global resilience and AI, and just about everything that underpins capitalism is going to get reshaped,” Taneja said. The Wall Street Journal spoke with Taneja about his new book and how he sees private capital’s role in high-profile industries.

Big companies from Microsoft to Paramount and NBCUniversal are ordering workers to show up to the office more often. If only their staffs would heed the call. Even as corporate bosses cut back on remote work and ratchet up in-office mandates, average office attendance has barely budged across U.S. workplaces. Companies are struggling to enforce mandates, and many managers tasked with herding folks into the office would rather not be there either. Other executives have made their peace with hybrid work.

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People

Greenfield Partners promoted Ortal Sasson-Hendin, Meir Cohen and Josh Trup to principal. The firm has offices in Tel Aviv and New York.

Cardless, a San Francisco-based credit-card platform that lets companies design and launch cards in-house, scored $60 million in Series C growth funding led by Spark Capital.

Obot AI, a San Francisco-based startup building open-source infrastructure platforms to accelerate the adoption of AI technology for enterprises, was seeded with a $35 million investment co-led by Mayfield Fund and Nexus Venture Partners.

Sunhat, a Germany-based startup helping enterprises automatically validate and share ESG and nonfinancial data, secured €9.2 million in Series A financing. CommerzVentures led the round, which included participation from Capnamic and others.

Track3D, a Milpitas, Calif.-based construction monitoring platform, raised $10 million in Series A funding from investors including Ironspring Ventures and Zacua Ventures.

Spring Free EV, a San Francisco-based lending platform for electric vehicle fleet owners and drivers, picked up a $7.2 million investment led by Spring Lane Capital.

Tilt, a Miami-based AI-powered wealth-management startup, landed $7.1 million in seed funding led by Portage and Lerer Hippeau.

wexler.ai, a London-based AI platform for complex litigation, was seeded with a $5.3 million investment led by Pear.

Shield, a Miami-based neobank for global trade businesses, collected $5 million in seed funding led by Giant Ventures.

• Google’s Ad Monopoly Under Microscope as Judge Weighs Remedies

• Scaramucci-Backed Crypto Treasury Company Launches With $550 Million Fundraising Plan

• Riverwood Capital Invests $180 Million in AI-Powered Technology Company AppZen

• Carrick Capital Acquires Background-Check Provider Intelligo

• Who Uses H-1B Visas the Most, in Charts

This newsletter was compiled by Matthew Strozier and Zachary Cole.

WSJ Pro Venture Capital is a premium service of The Wall Street Journal. We cover venture capital and the global startup ecosystem. Share your tips, comments and questions: vcnews@wsj.com

The Team: Matthew Strozier, Yuliya Chernova, Brian Gormley and Marc Vartabedian.