Category: Na mídia

Fabiano Rocha, founder and CEO of Jumpstart, interviewed on Pré-Market at Times Brasil — CNBC’s exclusive licensee · By Lara Madeira · August 11, 2026

The economic weight of foreign talent helps explain why the United States keeps attracting professionals and founders even as the political conversation about immigration hardens.

Half the next unicorns have an immigrant founder

Immigrants are behind nearly half of the US startups with the strongest potential to reach unicorn status in 2026, and account for 59% of those companies’ valuation. Demand for foreign professionals creates a dynamic that does not necessarily track the political debate.

The United States broadly needs immigrants — skilled and unskilled — across different fronts. And that financial motivation speaks far louder than any political order.

Fabiano Rocha, founder and CEO of Jumpstart

In AI the presence is even stronger

Among the nine companies leading the development of AI models, six have immigrant founders — OpenAI and Anthropic among them. Among the sector’s emerging startups the proportion is higher still.

When you look at the six new startups leading AI models, every one of them has immigrant founders.

Fabiano Rocha

The route changes, not the destination

Shifts in the political environment can temporarily reduce the number of people looking to move, but they do not remove the economic pull. Access to capital, to investors and to markets still weighs on a founder’s decision to set up in the country.

Despite all the noise in the administration, the businessperson, the startup founder, still goes — because the financial motivation is also very strong.

Fabiano Rocha

What tends to change is the route: founders shift toward other visa or green card categories depending on the conditions and approval rates available. And the competition has grown — Europe, Canada, Australia and China are chasing the same people.

It is worth remembering that only a share of international students manages to stay in the United States after graduation and professional training programmes — a funnel that ends up concentrating highly qualified profiles in technology, innovation and new business creation.

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Read the full article (in Portuguese) at Times Brasil — CNBC’s exclusive licensee.

Fabiano Rocha, CEO of Jumpstart, speaking to O Brasilianista · By Júlia Carmo · August 5, 2026

Entering the United States now demands more care from Brazilian travellers. Inspection of phones, social media and documents has increased, and automated cross-checking has raised the risk of a visa being cancelled — including for people who already hold one.

Screening does not end at the airport

The part that surprises travellers most is that scrutiny no longer stops at arrival.

A visa can be re-evaluated at any point during its validity, not only when it is issued.

Fabiano Rocha, CEO of Jumpstart

Since 2025 a continuous vetting system has monitored millions of visa holders across the full life of the document. That ongoing review helps explain the rise in revocations recorded by the State Department. Since March 2026, nearly every applicant must disclose the social media handles used over the previous five years, and biometric systems track entries and exits more precisely.

Working on a tourist visa leads the cancellations

The most common cause of deportation and cancellation remains carrying out activity incompatible with the visa category. And one misunderstanding comes up constantly: many people assume digital activity does not count as work under US immigration law.

Sponsorship, advertising or any financial return during the trip can be read as professional activity.

Fabiano Rocha, CEO of Jumpstart

Monetising content — even when the payment comes from a company outside the US — can be enough to trigger immediate cancellation and removal from the country.

What lowers the risk

• Never take paid work on a tourist visa, including monetised digital content during the stay.
• Do not delete social profiles or posts before applying — abrupt changes to a digital history tend to invite questions during review.
• Keep answers consistent between the DS-160 form and the interview.
• Respect the authorised stay to the day, and keep travel documentation organised.

Before any material change to an immigration situation, it is worth getting legal guidance — fixing a cancellation afterwards costs far more than planning ahead.

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Read the full article (in Portuguese) at O Brasilianista, which also interviewed lawyer Luiz Philipe Ferreira de Oliveira.

A column by Bianca Junqueira, CRO and partner at Jumpstart, published in RH Pra Você · August 4, 2026

AI does not have to replace the next generation of professionals — but it will change who is prepared for what comes next.

Artificial intelligence arrived in the labour market with a double promise: raise company productivity and transform how people work. But while large organisations celebrate efficiency gains, a concern is growing among one specific part of the workforce — young people trying to land a first professional opportunity.

The automation paradox in entry-level roles

AI’s impact on entry-level jobs reveals one of the new economy’s sharpest paradoxes. Many of the tasks traditionally given to people starting out — organising information, basic analysis, first-line support, operational work — are among the first that artificial intelligence automates. The problem is that those functions, however simple they look, have always played an important part in forming new talent.

The risk of a practical-learning deficit

The start of a career was never only about delivering results. It was also a learning stage, where young professionals built repertoire, understood processes and developed the skills needed to take on more strategic positions later. With accelerated automation comes the risk that the market will demand experience from a generation at exactly the moment automation is reducing their opportunities to learn.

This is already visible in market indicators. In the United States, a significant share of recent graduates struggles to find jobs matching their education, in an environment where companies have begun reviewing hiring for functions that AI tools can partly replace. The challenge is not only the number of openings, but the shift in which skills organisations value.

Even so, treating AI as an inevitable threat would be an incomplete reading. History shows that major technological shifts tend to eliminate some activities while creating new roles and markets. What is different this time is the speed of the transformation, and the need to prepare professionals to work alongside intelligent systems.

The human skills that matter in the new economy

The path is not competing with artificial intelligence, but developing capabilities that amplify human value. Critical thinking, creativity, communication, problem-solving and strategic vision all become more important in an environment where machines can absorb repetitive tasks.

Preparing the next generation

The conversation about the future of work needs to go beyond asking which jobs will be replaced. The central question is how companies, universities and governments can prepare a new generation for an economy where technology is present in practically every profession.

We should see artificial intelligence not only as a force of replacement, but as a tool of transformation. The greater risk is not that the technology exists — it is leaving professionals without access to the knowledge needed to use it. In an increasingly digital economy, the competitive advantage will not belong only to those who master AI, but to those who learn to work with it.

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Originally published (in Portuguese) in RH Pra Você.

Bianca Junqueira, our Co-founder and CRO, on what is changing — covered by NEO and Edomex al Día · August 2026

Three changes are moving through the U.S. immigration system at once — a court ruling, an administrative reallocation, and a pilot programme. Together they lower cost and time barriers for companies hiring international talent in fiscal year 2026.

The $100,000 H-1B surcharge was struck down

A federal court in Massachusetts annulled the additional US$100,000 fee applied to new H-1B petitions, finding it amounted to a tax Congress had not authorised. The government may still appeal, and USCIS has not announced how it will implement the ruling.

Many organisations had put international hiring on hold as immigration costs rose. If this ruling holds, it could revive interest in bringing in specialised foreign talent — particularly in sectors short of technical profiles.

Bianca Junqueira, Co-founder and CRO, Jumpstart

Employment green cards rose from 140,000 to 186,000

Roughly 46,000 permanent residencies unused in family categories were reassigned to employment-based ones, lifting the annual cap to 186,000 — one of the largest increases in years. The shift already shows in Visa Bulletin movement and mainly benefits EB-1 (extraordinary ability) and EB-2 (advanced degrees or national interest) applicants. For HR and corporate legal teams it widens the eligibility window and can speed up retention of critical talent.

A pilot for faster B-1/B-2 interviews

From 1 July to 31 December, the State Department is running a pilot that lets B-1/B-2 applicants secure a consular interview within 10 business days for an extra US$750. It only accelerates scheduling — it does not change how applications are assessed and does not guarantee approval. Capacity is limited and the list of participating consulates has not been published.

What it means

Several of these changes still depend on litigation or on final administrative implementation, which leaves real operational uncertainty for companies planning hires or expansion. The direction of travel, though, points toward more flexibility in labour mobility — and immigration planning has stopped being a purely legal function and become a competitiveness variable.

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Read the coverage: Diario Siglo XXI · Demócrata · NEO · Edomex al Día

Our analysis was covered by VEJA · By Daniel Gullino · August 3, 2026

Donald Trump’s first year back in office did not hit every visa category the same way. Jumpstart analysed official data from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and the Department of State, and the pattern that emerges is a filter that tightened around permanent residence while leaving temporary categories for documented talent largely open.

Talent and specialty visas stayed open

• O-1 — for people with extraordinary recognition in their field: 93.1% approved in 2025, across more than 34,000 petitions adjudicated by USCIS.
• H-1B — for specialty occupations: 97.8% approved in the first half of the year.

Permanent residence narrowed sharply

Interest in employment-based green cards stayed high through the year, but approval rates fell quarter over quarter.

• EB-1A — extraordinary ability: from 31.4% in the first quarter to 17.6% in the last quarter of 2025.
• EB-2 NIW — national interest waiver: from 14.7% to 4.9% over the same period.

Students absorbed the sharpest shock

In May 2025 the United States temporarily suspended new appointments for academic and exchange visas — timing that caught Brazilians close to the start of the university calendar. In June, F-1 issuances to Brazilians fell 52% year over year, recovering the following month.

Tourism moved less. The volume of B-1/B-2 visas issued to Brazilians dropped in the early months of 2025, but the annual approval rate held above 85%, close to its historical level — fewer visas issued, not a surge in refusals.

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Read VEJA’s article: veja.abril.com.br — O impacto do governo Trump nos vistos brasileiros (subscribers only)

Originally published in O Globo · Blog do Lauro Jardim · By Pâmela Dias · July 31, 2026

The immigration filter imposed by Donald Trump has affected Brazilians seeking to enter the United States in different ways. An unprecedented survey by Jumpstart, based on official data from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and the Department of State, shows that visas intended for talent and specialists had approval rates above 90% in the first year of the Republican’s second term.

The O-1 visa, aimed at people with extraordinary recognition in their fields of work, had a 93.1% approval rate in 2025, with more than 34,000 petitions reviewed. The H-1B, used by professionals in specialty occupations, reached 97.8% approval in the first half of the year.

For those seeking to live permanently in the United States, however, the picture became more difficult. Approval of the EB-1A, intended for people with extraordinary ability, fell from 31.4% in the first quarter to 17.6% in the last quarter of 2025. For the EB-2 NIW, aimed at professionals whose work is considered to be in the national interest, the drop was from 14.7% to 4.9%.

Students felt the most immediate impact. In May 2025, the United States temporarily suspended new appointments for academic and exchange visas. The following month, F-1 visa issuances to Brazilians fell 52% year over year, before recovering.

In tourism, the change was smaller: although the number of B-1/B-2 visas issued fell at the beginning of the year, the annual approval rate remained above 85%.

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Cover photo: The United States immigration agency has operated more visibly under Trump — Photo: AFP

Read the original article at: oglobo.globo.com — Blog do Lauro Jardim