As many others have pointed out there remain EB-1 visas and O category visas. In particular the O visas (for "extraordinary ability") are not subject to any nationality quotas. If these companies are serious about hiring the "smartest people", why would they not fall into these categories? Just for fun, here is an example of a teenager who recently got an O-1 visa as a software engineer [0]. Surely the folks applying to OpenAI, Nvidia, etc. would have similar qualifications?

[0] https://x.com/Mokshit06/status/1955377782902624410

99 percent of people working in nvidia won’t even qualify for an o1 or eb1 visa. For OpenAI the number of people qualifying will be way higher.

You’re absolutely right! It only depends how disingenuous industry is when they say they need the smartest people. For the smartest people, a mere $100,000 is barely signing bonus territory. Meanwhile, despite O-visas being uncapped there’s only 35-40k per year being used… and on the greencard EB side those are maxed out, 140,000 authorized per year (260,000 were issued in 2021?).