Policy & Regulation
OpenAI, Statsig settle DOJ hiring probe for $3.2 million
OpenAI and former subsidiary Statsig agreed to pay $3.2 million and accept three years of DOJ oversight over allegations they discouraged U.S. citizens from applying for green-card-sponsored jobs.
The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division announced Wednesday that OpenAI and its once-subsidiary Statsig signed a settlement that includes three years of oversight over the AI lab’s hiring practices. The DOJ alleged the companies used various tactics to prevent U.S. citizens from applying for jobs held by immigrant employees the companies were sponsoring for permanent U.S. residence. The companies did not admit to wrongdoing but agreed to pay $3.2 million — $1.2 million as a fine, with the remaining $2 million set aside for restitution to U.S. citizens who applied to those jobs, should the DOJ find any who were harmed.
The DOJ alleged OpenAI and Statsig broke provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act by not genuinely searching for qualified U.S. citizens for these roles before pursuing permanent-residence applications, as the law requires. According to the DOJ, the companies didn’t list the roles on public job boards, advertised them on the radio late at night, and required paper applications rather than electronic ones.
Fewer than 10 roles were at issue, but under the settlement the companies must pay the fine and submit to DOJ oversight of their PERM hiring, including drafting hiring policies for DOJ approval and filing semiannual reports on how many foreign-employee applications they pursued, how many U.S. citizens they interviewed, and other statistics.
OpenAI acquired Statsig, an AI A/B-testing company, in September 2025 and later divested at least part of the business in May 2026. The DOJ says it began investigating both companies separately before the acquisition, in August 2025, covering five cases at OpenAI between 2023 and 2025 and one at Statsig. The department frames the settlement as part of a broader crackdown, though the Immigration and Nationality Act, passed in 1952, has been enforced by prior administrations too — during the Biden administration, both Facebook and Apple signed similar settlements, though in those cases the DOJ alleged the violations were widespread and systematic.
Why it matters
The settlement shows green-card hiring compliance remains an enforcement priority across administrations, raising the stakes for AI companies that rely heavily on sponsoring skilled immigrant talent.