If the acquirer is buying your Indian company's shares and keeping that company alive as a subsidiary, the L-1A is usually the cleanest route for you. There's no lottery, and the acquisition itself creates the corporate link the visa needs. If the deal is an asset purchase or a licence-and-hire, and your Indian entity gets wound down, the L-1 is gone and you are choosing between an O-1A and an H-1B. For most Indian founders sitting in India today, the O-1A wins that contest by a wide margin.
The "H-1B transfer" in the title only exists if you already hold H-1B status in the US. Most founders being acqui-hired out of Bengaluru or Gurugram don't. For you, an H-1B means a fresh cap lottery plus exposure to the USD 100,000 payment that has been bouncing between courts and proclamations all year.
So start with the term sheet. Get a copy of the deal structure before anyone files anything, because the structure picks your visa for you.
Share purchase or asset deal: the line in the term sheet that decides your visa
An L-1 needs a qualifying relationship between the US employer and the foreign entity that employed you abroad. USCIS treats ownership of more than 50 percent as evidence of control, per Chapter 5 of the L-1 part of its Policy Manual. When a US company buys a majority of your Private Limited company's shares, your Indian company becomes its subsidiary. That's the relationship.
Acqui-hires are often structured the other way, though. The buyer takes the code and the people, pays a modest consideration, and lets the Indian entity die. Lawyers like this because it avoids inheriting liabilities. It also kills the L-1, because there is no longer a foreign qualifying organisation that employed you and keeps operating.
That second point catches people. The petitioner must show it will continue doing business in the US and in at least one other country for the whole of your L-1 stay, as Chapter 2 of the same Policy Manual part sets out. "Doing business" means the regular, systematic and continuous provision of goods or services. A shell kept open only to support your visa fails that test.
If the plan is to keep the Indian company as a real engineering centre, with your team still on its payroll, the L-1 stays alive. If the plan is to strip it and file for strike-off in six months, it doesn't.
A founder we advised earlier this year had a term sheet that said asset purchase on page two and "Indian subsidiary to be retained as development centre" on page nine. Those two lines pull in different directions. We asked the acquirer's counsel which one was true before we said a word about visas.
The L-1A test, and the founder who never paid herself a salary
The regulation at 8 CFR 214.2(l) asks for evidence of at least one continuous year of full-time employment abroad with a qualifying organisation within the three years before the petition is filed. For the L-1A, that year has to be in a managerial or executive capacity, and the US role has to be managerial or executive too. A CEO or CTO who has run the company for two years usually clears the capacity question easily.
Employment is the harder word. Plenty of bootstrapped founders took no salary for the first eighteen months, or drew money as director's remuneration with no employment contract, or paid themselves through a sole proprietorship before incorporating. USCIS reads "full-time employment" literally. Board minutes, an appointment letter, salary slips and Form 16 for the full year make the case. A cap table and a LinkedIn title don't.
Then there's time in the US. According to Chapter 6 of the L-1 Policy Manual, only time spent physically outside the United States counts toward the year. Brief B-1 or B-2 trips don't break continuity, but the days you spent in the US get subtracted. A founder who spent four months in San Francisco this year negotiating the deal may find the clock is four months shorter than they thought.
Fees, as of October 2026, from the USCIS G-1055 fee schedule dated 7 October 2026: USD 1,385 for a paper L petition (USD 695 for small employers), a USD 600 Asylum Program Fee for regular petitioners, and a USD 500 fraud prevention fee on initial L approvals.
A USD 4,500 surcharge applies only if the acquirer has 50 or more US employees and more than half of them are on H-1B or L-1. Premium processing is USD 2,965 for a decision within 15 business days, per the USCIS premium processing page.
The L-1A gives an initial stay of up to three years, extendable in two-year steps up to seven, as the USCIS L-1A page notes. The "new office" one-year limit you may have read about doesn't apply to you. That rule is for a foreign company opening a US operation. Your acquirer already has one.
Why the H-1B route is usually the weakest of the three for you
If you are in India and have never held H-1B status, the acquirer has to register you in the next cap lottery. That lottery now ranks entries by wage level. Under the weighted selection final rule published on 29 December 2025, a Level IV wage goes into the pool four times and a Level I wage once. A founder's retention salary often lands at Level IV. That helps, but a win in the spring registration only lets you start work from 1 October.
Then there's the money. The USCIS H-1B page, updated 21 September 2026, says the USD 100,000 payment applies to new petitions for beneficiaries outside the US without a valid H-1B visa. A Massachusetts district court vacated the implementing guidance in June 2026, and the First Circuit refused to stay that order in July.
Then a White House fact sheet of 18 September 2026 announced that the proclamation renewing the fee had been signed. As of October 2026 I would treat the payment as a live risk that the acquirer's counsel must price in, with no assumption that the court order protects you.
When is H-1B the right answer? When you, or a co-founder, are already in the US on an H-1B with another employer. Then the acquirer files a change-of-employer petition, portability lets you start once it's properly filed, and USCIS says the USD 100,000 payment doesn't apply to an in-country change of status or extension that it grants. That's the real "transfer". For a founder in India, it isn't on the menu.
The O-1A, where the acquisition becomes part of your evidence
The O-1A needs evidence under at least three of the regulatory criteria in 8 CFR 214.2(o). Two of them line up neatly with an acqui-hire. One is having held a critical role at organisations with a distinguished reputation. The other is having commanded a high salary or other significantly high remuneration. A press-covered acquisition, a retention package well above market, prior funding from known investors, and judging or speaking invitations can together build a strong file.
It has one big advantage over the L-1 for your situation. It doesn't care what happens to the Indian company. Asset deal or share deal, strike-off or survival, the O-1A doesn't change. The USCIS O-1 page allows an initial stay of up to three years with one-year extensions. The O petition fee is USD 1,055 on paper (USD 530 for small employers), plus the USD 600 Asylum Program Fee, as of October 2026. Premium processing at USD 2,965 applies here too.
The weakness is judgement. An L-1A is a corporate-records exercise. An O-1A is an argument, and a thin founder file with one TechCrunch mention and a seed round can be refused or hit with a long request for evidence. Ask yourself honestly whether three criteria are met today, before the acquisition press release does any work for you.
| Route | Works when | Main risk for an Indian founder (as of October 2026) |
|---|---|---|
| L-1A | Share purchase, Indian company survives and keeps operating, you have a documented year of full-time employment outside the US | Indian entity wound down, unpaid founder years, US days eating the one-year clock |
| O-1A | Any deal structure, founder with a real record of press, funding, high pay or critical roles | Thin evidence, a refusal on the merits |
| H-1B | You already hold H-1B status in the US with another employer | From India, the lottery timing and the USD 100,000 payment |
Signing, closing and your start date: getting the order right
Deal teams set a closing date and a start date and expect the visa to arrive in between. It rarely does. Even with premium processing you still need a visa stamp from a US consulate in India, and petition-based visa interviews have their own queues. Check the State Department's current wait times for Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad and New Delhi before anyone promises a Day One in California.
For the L-1A specifically, the petition can't be filed until the qualifying relationship exists. So the share transfer has to complete first. If your year abroad is borderline, closing later and filing later can be the difference between eligible and ineligible. Make sure the employment agreement with the Indian subsidiary continues without a gap through closing. A resignation from the Indian company on the closing date, followed by a fresh US offer, is exactly the gap you don't want.
Between signing and the visa, you may need to fly over for integration meetings. A B-1 covers meetings and negotiation. It does not cover doing the job. The CBP B-1 permissible activities sheet from early 2026 is blunt about productive labour. If an O-1 is already filed, read our note on a B-1 trip while the O-1 petition is pending before you book.
How we'd run this file alongside the acquirer's counsel
The acquirer will have immigration lawyers. Our role sits beside them, on your side of the table. We start with one call that includes their counsel, and we bring the questions they may not ask a founder who is busy closing a deal. Is the Indian entity surviving, and for how long? What does your payroll history actually show for the last three years? How many days have you spent in the US since the clock started? Is anyone on the team already on an H-1B?
From those answers we'd recommend one primary route and one fallback. Most often that's L-1A primary with an O-1A file prepared in parallel, because the O-1A survives a late change in deal structure and the L-1 doesn't.
We'd also prepare you for the consular interview. An acquired founder's story is unusual at an Indian consulate. You need to explain the acquisition and your US role in a few plain sentences that match the petition exactly. Where your Indian salary history sits on the DS-160, and how it reads next to a US employer, is covered in our piece on the DS-160 employer section for founders with Indian salaries.
When a founder should not try to sort this out alone
Bring in help before signing if the deal is an asset purchase or the earn-out depends on you being in the US by a fixed date. Gaps in your employment record with your own company are a third warning sign. Any of these turns a visa question into a deal-terms question, and once the purchase agreement is signed you lose the ability to fix it.
An earn-out that pays only if you are "based in the United States" by month three, with an H-1B as the only plan, is a clause I'd push back on.
Also be careful if family is moving with you. An L-2 or O-3 spouse has very different work rights, and that often settles the choice for couples where both earn.
What founders ask us in the middle of an acqui-hire
Can I file the L-1A before the acquisition closes?
No. The qualifying relationship between the US company and your Indian entity has to exist when the petition is filed. A signed but unclosed share purchase agreement is a promise of a relationship. Prepare the petition in advance, close the deal, then file the same week.
My company is being bought but I took no salary for the first year. Does that rule out the L-1A?
It might. What matters is whether you have one continuous year of full-time employment with the Indian entity, outside the US, inside the last three years. If you started a salary and an employment contract eighteen months ago, you may be fine. If the paper trail starts four months ago, look at the O-1A, or a later L-1A filing once the year is complete.
Is an O-1A safer than an L-1A for an acquired founder?
Safer against deal changes, riskier on the merits. The L-1A is strong when the records line up, because it turns on corporate facts you can prove. The O-1A depends on how an adjudicator weighs your achievements. Where both are possible, we usually file the L-1A and keep the O-1A ready.