Tech Talent Drop - Edition 25

AI has become the operating system for hiring and this week’s headlines show where demand is surging: immigration policy, enterprise AI rollouts, and fresh capital across infra and tools.

The Drop

H-1B changes: pressure on startups, advantage to outsourcers.
A new breakdown this week argues recent H-1B changes will raise costs and tilt the field toward larger outsourcing firms. If you’re a startup, expect tougher competition for visas and start prepping local/near-shore plans.

OpenAI pivots hard to enterprise with new partners & integrations.
At its developer event, OpenAI emphasized an enterprise push—new integrations (e.g., Spotify, Zillow) and app plug-ins that make ChatGPT feel more like a platform. Hiring signal: platform engineers, solution architects, and partner eng roles.

Perplexity makes its Comet AI browser free for everyone.
Comet blends browsing + an AI assistant to summarize pages, run tasks, and keep a research workspace—handy for recruiter/company intel or prospect prep. Rollout went global and free this week.

Apple officially retires the Clips app.
Clips was pulled from the App Store and will no longer receive updates. Not a hiring story—but a reminder that consumer tools churn fast; portfolio skills (not tools) matter.

AI Tool of the Week - https://www.createanything.com/

An AI app builder/agent that ships full-stack apps (web + mobile) from a prompt—frontend, backend, auth, DB, payments, hosting, and even one-click store submission flows. You can export code and choose models (GPT-4o, Claude 3.5, etc.). Great for whipping up internal recruiting tools (req intake, interviewer load dashboards, referral portals) without heavy eng lift.

Check out an interesting game I built with it - https://numforge-847.created.app

Hiring / Interview Insight

Assess for judgment—especially on privacy & automation.
Add a 15-minute scenario where the candidate (1) audits an AI-generated prospect list for data-use issues and (2) decides when to pause/escalate an automated workflow (outreach or scheduling). Score reasoning, risk triage, and data hygiene—not just output speed.

Funding Watch (all announced Oct 6–12)

• Reflection AI — open frontier lab — $2B (Series B); hiring: research, evals, infra.

• Base Power — home battery/AI-energy mgmt — $1B (Series C); hiring: power electronics, grid software, ops.

• Stoke Space — reusable rockets — $510M; hiring: avionics, propulsion software, test/ops.

• Prezent — AI services roll-up — $30M; hiring: AI services, delivery, CS/GTM.

• Knapsack — design-to-engineering system of record — $10M (Series A); hiring: platform, DX, integrations.

Why it matters: Capital is clustering around AI research, energy/infra, space/advanced hardware, and workflow platforms—expect demand in platform, reliability, and partner engineering.

Quick Bytes

• Thinking Machines co-founder Andrew Tulloch joins Meta (leadership signal for core AI hiring).

• Digital health funding is ahead of last year—large AI-enabled rounds are back (role creation in data/ML, compliance).

What to do this week

• Draft a one-liner on data privacy for candidate outreach; be ready to explain LinkedIn’s AI-training opt-out path.

• Track enterprise AI partner hiring (solution architects, integrations, enablement) tied to the OpenAI push.

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