Job hunting can be daunting, especially for those who are not immigrants to the U.S. Not only do you have to compete on the strength of your resume, but you also have to comb through hundreds of job offers to find the few that will sponsor your work visa, and if you lose your job, you only have 60 days to find another one before you have to leave the country.
The lottery (the H-1B program, which randomly selects skilled foreigners to work in the US) is notoriously difficult to win. According to official data, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) received nearly 500,000 applications in fiscal year 2025. Of those, about 120,000 were selected to proceed to the “registration” stage, but only 85,000, or 18% of all applicants, ultimately receive a visa.
California-based startup Jobright.ai wants to make it easier for foreign workers to find jobs in the U.S. The company's co-founder Eric Cheng told TechCrunch that as an immigrant himself, he knows firsthand the struggles of foreign workers, so it was only natural for him to include an “H1-B filter” in Jobright. The feature is based on USCIS data from companies that have previously offered H1-B visa sponsorship, and has quickly become popular among job seekers from India and China.
“This group has been overlooked for a long time,” said Chen, who worked as an early engineer at Box. To date, about 30% of JobRite's users are foreign workers, and thanks to the H-1B filter, JobRite has gained 50,000 registered users since its April launch without any marketing spend.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, after selling his content collaboration SaaS company, Chen came up with the idea for a job-seeking platform while traveling around China. During his months-long journey, Chen visited mostly developing cities and met dozens of young people struggling to find work amid the global economic slowdown. Chen eventually helped 10 of them find employment by simply asking about their skill sets and suggesting career options.
“They were talented, but had a fairly limited understanding of the job market. They had no idea what jobs were available or what they could do,” Chen says. “What if they all had an experienced headhunter who knew them well and could recommend jobs that were beyond their knowledge? ChatGPT gave me the ability to build such a tool.”
Image credit: JobrightImage credit: Jobright
Leveraging large-scale language models, Jobright has created an AI agent that acts as a tailored headhunter for each job seeker. The AI interprets candidate experience and recommends jobs they may not have considered. It scores positions based on their compatibility with the candidate, a feature used daily by 60% of Jobright users. It also helps users search LinkedIn contacts who are more likely to receive job referrals by identifying alumni and former colleagues.
The AI-powered job search market is competitive, but Jobright believes it's found a niche: It shares features like using AI to write resumes and fill out applications with larger companies like YC-backed Simplify, but the target user is different.
“Most of our users are mid- to senior-level professionals with at least two to three years of work experience,” Chen said. “Their challenge is not to apply to more jobs, but to find personalized job search strategies and opportunities that fit their career stage and professional strengths.” Meanwhile, Simplify is popular among students and recent graduates looking for internships, the founder noted.
“Sure, there's LinkedIn and other job listing platforms, but users still have to spend a lot of time searching on their own. There's a huge information asymmetry,” he added.
Asked if he was worried that LinkedIn would develop a similar AI feature to replace Jobright, Cheng suggested that the giant is fundamentally a social network, while Jobright is designed to be “AI native.”
“It will be costly for LinkedIn to fully embrace AI because it would require upending our core ad-based business model, which prioritizes clicks over accuracy. We're not just a wrapper around AI; AI defines every aspect of our product, including the data, recommendations, and user experience.”
JobRight previously raised a $4.5 million funding round led by Lunch Ventures, followed by Uphonest Ventures and Source Code Capital. In the future, the startup plans to expand its user base outside the U.S.