- Uday Ruddarraju promoted to lead OpenAI's compute infrastructure.
- Oversees massive investment in AI data centers and technology.
- Uday's appointment will be instrumental in expanding data centres and computing capacity.
OpenAI has named Uday Ruddarraju, an Indian-American, to lead its computing and infrastructure business. As the company is focused on expanding its data centre capacity and investing heavily in AI infrastructure, Uday has been promoted to manage the business. Former xAI executive Uday Ruddarraju joined OpenAI last year and was appointed as the Chief Technology Officer for compute in July. He announced his promotion through his LinkedIn profile. With his promotion, he will replace Sachin Katti, who has been overseeing the infrastructure. However, Katti will remain as an advisor to OpenAI.
Who Is Uday Ruddarraju?
Ruddarraju completed his bachelor's degree in computer science from CBIT Hyderabad and moved to the United States to pursue a master’s degree at the University of Minnesota. With an interest in technology, he even did several internships, including one at Amazon as a software engineer. After completing graduation, he joined eBay, where he built cloud infrastructure to power the e-commerce platform.
In 2018, he moved to Robinhood and spent nearly six years there. Starting as a Staff Software Engineer, he rose through the ranks and finally became the Senior Director of Engineering & Head of Infrastructure.
Uday was hired by Elon Musk in 2024 as the head of infrastructure engineering at xAI. There, he was responsible for building the large-scale computing systems needed to train the AI chatbots. His expertise and experience led him to OpenAI in 2025 as the head of compute and infrastructure. He has now been promoted to lead OpenAI’s entire computing capacity and infrastructure operations. Udhay will now report directly to the company’s President, Greg Brockman.
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OpenAI To Spend Trillions To Develop AI Models
The leadership change is the result of OpenAI's future aspiration to invest in AI models. Reinforcing this, the company’s CEO Sam Altman mentioned that the company might invest trillions of dollars in the physical building and equipment required for developing AI models. In 2026, Reuters reported, citing CNBC, that OpenAI is expected to spend around $600 billion on computing through 2030.
In his new role, Uday will oversee these infrastructure operations while managing commercial partnerships, driving business relationships with major technology providers like Nvidia. As OpenAI powers through the path of building highly evolved AI models, Uday's appointment will be instrumental in growing the strategic importance of data centres and computing capacity.