WASHINGTON — The Justice Department announced Tuesday it has secured a $3.2 million settlement with OpenAI and one of its subsidiaries to address claims they discriminated against American workers. The DOJ alleged that the companies preferred to hire and recruit foreigners with temporary employment visas.

“It is illegal to discriminate against U.S. workers by preferring temporary visa holders for jobs,” DOJ Civil Rights Division Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon said in a statement. “This substantial settlement ensures that OpenAI redresses harm and changes its recruitment practices so that U.S. workers receive a fair opportunity for highly sought after technology positions.”

Citing an investigation it conducted, the DOJ said OpenAI took various steps to dissuade American workers from applying for certain positions, such as advertising on radio stations late at night. The DOJ said the company also did not advertise positions it sought to fill through a Permanent Labor Certification process on an external job website, as it did with other jobs.

According to the Labor Department, PERM allows employers to hire foreign workers for permanent, full-time jobs in the United States provided no qualified, willing or able U.S. worker is available for the position.

The DOJ said companies cannot use the PERM program to discriminate against U.S. workers.

OpenAI said it disagrees with the Justice Department’s conclusions.

“OpenAI’s mission is to ensure that (artificial general intelligence) benefits all of humanity,” an OpenAI spokesperson told Spectrum News in a statement. “Fulfilling that mission and maintaining America’s leadership in AI requires attracting and retaining the best talent from the United States and around the world. While we disagree with the DOJ’s findings, we reached this agreement to resolve the matter and move forward with our PERM program, which is critical for employees and candidates requiring immigration support.” 

According to the 2025 Silicon Valley Index from the Joint Venture Silicon Valley think tank, 65% of technology workers in the San Francisco Bay Area tech hub are foreign born. According to Forbes, nearly two-thirds of the top AI companies in the U.S. were either founded or co-founded by immigrants.

Statsig — the product development firm OpenAI acquired last year that was part of the combined DOJ settlement — was founded by Vijaye Raji, a former Meta and Microsoft executive who was born and educated in India and came to the U.S. on an H-1B work visa.

Statsig had not responded to Spectrum News’ request for comment about the settlement before this story was published.

As part of the deal, OpenAI has agreed to pay $1.2 million in civil penalties to the United States. It will also create a $2 million fund to compensate victims of what the DOJ called “discriminatory practices.”

OpenAI has also agreed to post positions that are available for PERM recruitment on a public career website, to train its employees on anti-discrimination requirements and to revise its employment practices, the DOJ said.

The OpenAI settlement is the largest of 13 the DOJ has negotiated as part of its Protecting U.S. Workers Initiative, which was re-launched in 2025 to target, investigate and take enforcement action against companies that favor temporary foreign visa holders over American workers, according to the DOJ website. The program was originally created during President Donald Trump’s first term in 2017 but was deprioritized during the Biden administration, the agency said.

The DOJ has reached settlements with 11 companies so far this year as part of the program. Most of them were technology companies that were fined in the tens of thousands of dollars.