Who Is Indian-American Uday Ruddarraju? OpenAI's New Head Of Data Centres And Compute

OpenAI has appointed former xAI executive Uday Ruddarraju to lead its infrastructure and computing businesses as the ChatGPT maker accelerates its data centre expansion and invests heavily in AI infrastructure. Indian-American technology executive Uday Ruddarraju has taken charge of a critical part of OpenAI's operations, overseeing the computing capacity needed to develop and deploy advanced artificial intelligence models.

According to Bloomberg, Ruddarraju joined OpenAI in 2025 and was appointed chief technology officer for compute in July 2026. His latest promotion expands his responsibilities to include the company's infrastructure and compute businesses.

Before joining OpenAI, Ruddarraju worked at Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company, xAI, bringing experience in infrastructure engineering and large-scale computing systems. Speaking to Bloomberg, Ruddarraju said he expected the leadership transition to proceed smoothly because of his previous work with OpenAI's engineering, construction and technical infrastructure teams. He also highlighted continuity among the strategy and business leaders.

Also, in a LinkedIn post announcing his appointment as CTO of compute, Ruddarraju highlighted the engineering challenges involved in expanding OpenAI's computing capabilities.

Why Is OpenAI Reshuffling Its Infrastructure Leadership?

Ruddarraju succeeds Sachin Katti, who will transition out of his infrastructure leadership role over the coming weeks and remain an adviser to OpenAI. Katti joined OpenAI approximately a year ago after serving as chief technology and AI officer at Intel. He oversaw major infrastructure initiatives, including an eight-gigawatt project in Ohio involving SB Energy and Nvidia, and a Georgia data centre designed and led by OpenAI.

Katti also supervised GPT-Infra, an initiative exploring how OpenAI models could assist with semiconductor and infrastructure development. Bloomberg reported that this work will now fall under OpenAI's chip chief, Richard Ho.

Other departures have affected the infrastructure team. Bloomberg reported that Chris Malone left in August, while Peter Hoeschele departed for Meta earlier this year.

Billions At Stake In AI Infrastructure

The leadership change comes as OpenAI pursues ambitious computing expansion plans. CEO Sam Altman has indicated the company could spend trillions of dollars on the physical infrastructure required to develop future AI models.

Reuters reported in February 2026, citing CNBC, that OpenAI was expected to spend approximately $600 billion on computing through 2030.

Ruddarraju will oversee infrastructure operations while strengthening commercial partnerships, including relationships with major technology providers such as Nvidia.

His appointment underscores the growing strategic importance of data centres and computing capacity as OpenAI competes to build and deploy increasingly powerful AI systems.