America benefited from talented Indians, but one can’t game H1B system: Elon Musk

“I think America benefits greatly from talented Indians coming to America,” American entrepreneur Elon Musk said in a conversation with Nikhil Kamath, a Bengaluru-based entrepreneur and co-founder of Zerodha.

But when asked why the climate regarding US immigration seems to have changed for Indians, Musk replied: “Basically, it was a free-for-all environment with no border controls… Unless you have border controls, you’re not a country.”

Mr Musk, who is Chief Executive Officer and Product Architect of Tesla and founder, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Engineer of Space “This has created a perception in the United States that jobs in the country are being taken away by talented people in other countries,” he added.

“There has been some abuse of the H1B program. Some outsourcing companies have gamed the system,” he said while speaking on a podcast published by People by WTF. He told Mr Kamath that ‘it is important to correct these abuses’.

“We need to stop gaming the system … but I certainly don’t think we should shut down the H1B program,” said Mr. Musk, who is also the founder of xAI, a firm that owns X (formerly Twitter).

Answering Mr. Kamath’s question about what percentage of the internet is spent on He added: “It would be great to bring together what people say in many different languages, automatically translated, so that you have the collective consciousness of people in every language group, not just people in a particular language group.”

Mr Kamath had a two-hour conversation with the US businessman on a wide range of topics including X (Twitter), artificial intelligence, the future of content, monetary energy, Starlink, friendship, tariffs, children, DOGE, immigration, philanthropy and even whether live events are the world’s next big asset class.