Amid H-1B debate, US startup CEO hails Indian engineer's role in outpacing OpenAI, Anthropic

The value of Indian engineering talent is once again under the spotlight, with Factory AI co-founder and CEO Matan Grinberg crediting Stanford-trained computer scientist Abhay Singhal for playing a decisive role in helping the startup outperform artificial intelligence giants like OpenAI and Anthropic in building advanced coding agents.

"How did a team of 4 research engineers beat $100B labs like OpenAI and Anthropic in establishing the best coding agent? It starts with having a killer engineer on your team. In our case, we have Abhay Singhal," Grinberg wrote in a social media post on Saturday.

Grinberg recounted first meeting Singhal after reaching out on LinkedIn. "Within 2 weeks of meeting, Abhay ditched his other offers and became the first (and to-date only) new grad that has passed our engineering bar at Factory," he said.

The startup, which recently announced a Series B funding round backed by NEA, Sequoia, JPMorgan and Nvidia, launched its upgraded "Droids" platform this summer. Grinberg described how Singhal cut short a family trip to Montana to return to San Francisco and help meet an accelerated launch schedule.

"Abhay without hesitation packed his bags, rented a car in the middle of nowhere, zoomed across the mountains, and took the next flight out back to SF," he wrote.

The company’s work paid off on Terminal-Bench, an open benchmark for testing AI coding agents, where Factory’s systems demonstrated performance superior to competitors. Grinberg said the breakthrough was achieved by engineering agent design rather than relying only on larger models, with innovations like hierarchical prompting, per-model adapters, simplified tool use, time discipline and task planning.

Singhal, who holds a master’s degree in computer science from Stanford University, is part of a wider trend of Indian-origin engineers gaining recognition in global technology companies.

The praise comes at a time when immigration barriers are reshaping global talent flows. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said Saturday that his government sees an opening to attract skilled workers from the technology sector who may have previously headed to the United States.

"What is clear is that the opportunity to attract people who previously would've got so-called H-1B visas," Carney said in London. "Many of those workers are in the tech sector and willing to move for work."

U.S. President Donald Trump last week signed an executive order imposing $100,000 fees on new H-1B visas, creating uncertainty for companies dependent on international engineers. Both Germany and the UK have also moved to position themselves as destinations for skilled workers facing new hurdles in the U.S.