Alma is trying to make immigration not suck 🌏

CV Deep Dive

Today, we’re diving into a conversation with Aizada Marat, co-founder and CEO of Alma. 

Key Takeaways:

• Alma provides high-quality and fast immigration services, focusing on talent visas and company-sponsored immigration.

• They combine an attorney-first strategy with AI-powered internal tools for document review and narrative building, to make Alma faster than law firms in securing visas, while also improving approval rates

• Alma started off specializing in O-1 visas for founders but since then has expanded into all other immigrant (EB-1, EB2-NIW, etc.) and non-immigrant (H-1B, TN, L-1, etc.) talent visas.

Alma is a platform focused on modernizing immigration legal services for highly skilled professionals and startups. Alma prioritizes speed without compromising the quality of legal services, and clients always talk only to attorneys, and never to paralegals or legal assistants. This is possible because Alma uses technology to automate low value tasks in the attorney’s workflow, making the process more efficient for both clients and attorneys.

Aizada, a Harvard Law graduate and practicing attorney, founded Alma after experiencing firsthand the difficulties of the immigration. Her own case was badly mishandled and she recognized how fragmented and inconsistent immigration services could be, especially for individuals without corporate backing or smaller companies.

The company raised a $5.5 in funding from Bling Capital, Forerunner, Village Global, NFX, Conviction, MVP, NEA, Silkroad Innovation Hub and top immigrant founders in the US.

In this conversation, Aizada explains the immigration process, Alma’s approach to improving it, and how advancements in AI are shaping the future of legal workflows.

Let’s dive in ⚡️

Read time: 8 mins

Our Chat with Aizada 💬

Hey Aizada! Let’s start with a brief intro and what inspired you to found Alma?

I’m Aizada Marat, originally from Kyrgyzstan and an immigrant myself. I was an attorney at Cooley LLP, also a management consultant at McKinsey & Co. My journey to founding Alma stemmed directly from a personal pain point. In 2018, I faced a severe immigration issue after my case was mishandled by an immigration law firm. As a result, I was left unable to work, travel, or even maintain a clear legal status in the U.S. for over a year. It was an incredibly isolating experience—being stuck in the U.S., unable to see my family, and realizing how fragmented and unreliable the immigration law space was.

The immigration market is dominated by small law firms, with the average size being just 5–15 people. While there are a few big names, they mostly cater to corporate clients, leaving individuals like me with little guidance. If I, as a Harvard Law School graduate and experienced attorney, could fall into this trap, I realized countless others must be facing even worse challenges.

When LLMs and NLP technology started advancing, it became clear that the legal space was ripe for disruption, especially with how heavily lawyers rely on language. Given our shared experiences as immigrants, my co-founders, Assel and Shuo, and I decided to focus on Alma on solving these critical gaps in immigration law. Alma is truly a company born from personal experience.

So what is Alma, and what makes it stand out from traditional immigration services? 

Alma is immigration legal services reimagined. We aim to transform the traditional immigration experience, which often depends heavily on the individual lawyer handling your case. Our goal is to scale quality and provide every client with a consistent, superior experience.

We focus on three core pillars:

1. Speed – Immigration is inherently deadline-driven. Whether it’s responding to layoffs for H-1B visa holders or addressing critical filing windows, timing is crucial. My personal case highlighted how missing a single deadline can create years of complications, so we prioritize speed in everything we do.

2. Excellence – This applies to every aspect of our service, from client communication to the legal documents we prepare. We ensure that the quality of our services far exceeds what people expect for the money they pay.

3. Care – We truly care about our clients. As immigrants ourselves, we understand the emotional weight of these cases. Every client’s success matters deeply to us, and I personally stay invested in their outcomes.

Alma supports individuals on their journey toward work authorization, green cards, citizenship, and the American Dream. For many, this means founding companies or advancing their careers. At the same time, we position ourselves as trusted partners for companies navigating the challenges of scaling their teams with top talent, which often involves hiring immigrants. Immigration isn't just an immigrant’s problem—it becomes everyone’s problem when you're trying to hire the best talent.

Is there a specific subsection of immigrants that Alma is designed for? 

Our primary focus is on highly skilled immigrants. We specialize in talent visas that grant work authorization and the right to work in the US. These include:

• Non-immigrant visas: O-1A, O-1B, H-1B, L-1, TN, etc.

• Immigrant visas: EB-1A, EB-1B, EB-1C, EB-2 NIW, etc.

On the individual side, our clients are typically founders, professionals, and other highly skilled individuals navigating their career paths in the US. On the company side, we work with organizations ranging from seed-stage startups to Series B and C companies that need immigration support as they scale and hire top global talent.

Are there any customer success stories that come to mind?

We’ve had quite a few success stories that I think really show how Alma stands out. One example is how we’ve managed to get O-1 visas for clients in as little as two months. A typical case might look like this: a client signs with us at the end of July, provides all the required information, and by the end of September, they already have their approved documents in hand. Speed is one of our core values, and clients often tell us how impressed they are by our quick turnaround and responsiveness.

We’ve worked with a lot of startup founders to secure their O-1 visas quickly. Founders often have so much on their plates—building their MVPs, selling, fundraising—that dealing with immigration feels like a distraction. We really try to lift that burden entirely off their shoulders so they can focus on growing their companies.

One of the things I’m proud of is how we’ve helped founders across the spectrum. Some have raised significant venture funding, but others have raised less, and we’ve still been able to build compelling cases for their O-1 visas. We’ve also secured green cards for some incredibly accomplished individuals.

What’s most rewarding is when clients who initially didn’t think they’d qualify for an O-1 visa or a green card come to us, and we prove them wrong. They’re often amazed at the outcome. (screenshot for Indian national approved for EB-1)

Can you walk us through the immigration process and share some surprising aspects people might not realize? 

The immigration process, especially for talent visas, is often misunderstood. People tend to think of O-1 visas as "Einstein visas," requiring achievements like Nobel Prizes, Oscars, or other major accolades. But the truth is, many people—especially founders—qualify without realizing it. For instance:

• Founders: Raising venture funding qualifies as a national award for USCIS purposes. Similarly, being part of accelerators like Y Combinator, Global 500,  or TechStars provides memberships that count as significant criteria.

• Self-Sponsored Green Cards: Many are surprised to learn they can self-sponsor for EB-1 or EB-2 NIW green cards, bypassing the need to rely on their company. For example, EB-1 processing for individuals from China or India takes two years and is immediately available for others. EB-2 NIW takes two years globally, except for China and India, where it may take up to 12 years but is still faster than other pathways.

Understanding immigration nuances is a massive pain, how does Alma improve the process?

Our value prop is a combination of a few things:

1. Free consultation: We assess eligibility for different visas and give clients a clear picture of their options first. Then, once they start working with us, everything happens on our platform.

2. Speed: With the fastest document turnaround in the industry, Alma prepares complete visa packages — often 600 to 1500 pages—within two weeks.

3. Platform: Alma’s web app acts like an immigration OS, it brings all the documents, all the communication, everything in one place. Clients always know the next steps, and they can see what their attorney is doing in real time. At the same time, attorneys can track what the client is doing—whether they’ve started filling out forms or if there’s evidence missing. We catch issues early because it’s all so organized. 

4. Narrative Building: The team focuses on strategy, building a compelling story that highlights a client’s achievements in the best light for USCIS.

5. Attorney-First Model: Unlike traditional law firms where clients are often handed off to paralegals, at Alma, clients always interact directly with attorneys. This ensures all advice is legally sound and builds trust with highly skilled professionals who value accuracy and expertise.

What I love is that our clients are often so happy with the process that they start sharing about Alma on social media before their cases are even approved. I’ve had to ask, “Are you sure you don’t want to wait until it’s official?” and they’re like, “No, this has already been amazing.” Hearing that makes me so happy. That’s what I want—to know that people feel cared for and supported every step of the way.

You mentioned that the rise of LLMs was a big unlock for founding Alma, how exactly is Alma using AI? 

Before we dive into AI use-cases, I’d like to note that at Alma we take confidentiality and privacy of our clients very seriously, especially since I am an attorney myself. We have special agreements in place with LLM providers that offer us 0 data retention on their end. No information of our clients is ever stored anywhere with LLM provider companies. 

We use AI primarily to process the large volumes of information we get from clients. For example, when someone submits a lengthy article, like a 200-page document about neuroscience, neither the attorney nor the paralegal is a neuroscience expert. Large language models help us process and translate that information into layman's terms. That way, it's not only digestible for us but also for USCIS officials.

AI also plays a role in drafting certain documents by summarizing and organizing the information into layman’s terms. However, the strategy part—how we position someone as extraordinary in their field for a talent visa—remains entirely with the attorney. A lot of our work is about building a cohesive narrative from diverse backgrounds. For instance, we might have a client who has done consulting, product management, and engineering. The attorney’s job is to abstract all that into a single, clear area of expertise that fits the requirements for USCIS.

AI helps in that abstraction process, saving us time by highlighting connections or themes in a person’s background that might not be immediately obvious. But, right now, it’s still early days, and the efficiencies AI provides are modest.

In the long term, though—four to five years from now—we aim for AI to handle a lot of the tedious tasks, like filling out forms, assembling massive 600–1500-page packages, and cross-checking for completeness. This will give attorneys more time to focus on clients' needs and the strategic aspects of cases, while also ensuring that nothing gets missed in the review process. For now, attorneys still do a manual review, but AI is laying the groundwork for faster, more accurate processes.

What are your thoughts on how USCIS handles immigration today, and what changes do you hope to see in the future for both the process and immigration policies?

Ideally, USCIS should implement more premium processing services throughout the entire green card journey. Right now, the green card process has two parts: the initial processing of cases like EB-1 or EB-2 NIW and then the adjustment of status to a green card. The second part—adjustment of status—doesn’t offer premium processing, so there’s no way to expedite it. You just have to wait, which can be frustrating and limiting in terms of travel etc. Many companies and individuals ask us about expediting their AOS, which is impossible for now.

Another improvement I’d love to see is moving more of the process online. A lot of things still have to be done manually—like shipping entire packages to USCIS via FedEx. That should be a thing of the past. On the positive side, USCIS has started using AI to review applications during their first pass, and I hope they continue adopting AI to speed up and improve their processes. Timeliness is so critical in immigration, and AI could really make a difference here.

People ask me about the election a lot. Regarding the broader immigration landscape, I think highly skilled immigration won’t see major changes regardless of who wins the next election*. Both leading candidates seem friendly toward highly skilled workers. The bigger political debates are around asylum seekers and issues like the southern border, which don’t directly affect our focus.

That said, I completely understand why immigrants are nervous about elections. I remember when Trump banned people from Kyrgyzstan, even green card holders, from entering the US. It was very scary, but thankfully the system of checks and balances in the US meant that judges overturned those decisions. Still, immigrants always feel this uncertainty since the stakes are so high for them. 

As an immigrant myself, I understand the anxiety. That's why we're here to help people navigate these challenges.

*Note: This interview took place shortly before the election.

Wait, the government is actually using AI to help speed up the process on their side? That’s kind of surprising, how are they using it? 

I was really happy to see USCIS openly disclose where they’re already using AI. It’s a step in the right direction, and I hope it sets the stage for more innovation in the future. Right now, one of the areas they’re applying AI is in organizing, understanding, searching, and summarizing text and classifying evidence in large application packages, which can range from 600 to 1500 pages. Their system scans and reviews the documents to check for missing information and ensure accuracy and consistency. While it might be in the early stages, it’s a good effort to streamline parts of the process.

Another interesting way they’re using AI is for training internal staff. USCIS is a huge agency, and onboarding new employees takes time. AI helps train staff to review applications consistently, ensuring they understand the standards for delivering uniform outcomes. This is a big deal because one of the most common complaints from applicants is inconsistency. For instance, two co-founders might submit nearly identical applications, but one gets approved, and the other is rejected even if they were reviewed by the same service center in California. AI could play a big role in addressing those inconsistencies.

I really hope the administration continues exploring AI’s potential in immigration. It’s not just about speeding up the process but also about creating more fairness and reliability in the outcomes.

Can you tell us about the team at Alma, the culture you’re fostering as the founder, and if you’re hiring?

Alma is a team of 13 people, split between engineers and legal professionals, and we’re currently hiring a senior frontend engineer. Our culture is customer-obsessed, high-performing, and deeply collaborative. Engineers and attorneys work closely, sharing fast feedback loops to refine workflows and improve automation.

What sets Alma apart is that everyone genuinely cares about immigration. Many team members are first- or second-generation immigrants, or have personal ties to the immigrant experience, which makes the mission deeply meaningful. We’re united by a shared goal of streamlining immigration and delivering faster, high-quality outcomes. When people care about the mission, they perform at their best—and that’s what we strive for.

Conclusion

To stay up to date on the latest with Alma, learn more about them here.

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