OpenAI appoints Uday Ruddarraju to lead infrastructure after Sachin Katti departure

OpenAI has appointed former xAI executive Uday Ruddarraju to lead its infrastructure and compute business, reporting to President Greg Brockman. Ruddarraju succeeds Sachin Katti, who is stepping down to become an advisor after overseeing major initiatives, including an 8-gigawatt data center project in Ohio. The leadership transition follows other recent infrastructure exits, including Chris Malone and Peter Hoeschele, as CEO Sam Altman envisions spending trillions on computing capacity.

Uday Ruddarraju's leadership roles at OpenAI

• ▪Uday Ruddarraju joined OpenAI in 2025 as head of compute and infrastructure before being promoted to chief technology officer of compute in July 2026
• ▪OpenAI appointed former xAI executive Uday Ruddarraju to lead its infrastructure and compute business, reporting to OpenAI President Greg Brockman

Uday Ruddarraju's career before OpenAI

• ▪Prior to joining xAI in 2024, Uday Ruddarraju built cloud infrastructure at eBay and spent nearly six years at Robinhood, becoming senior director of engineering and head of infrastructure
• ▪Uday Ruddarraju served as head of infrastructure engineering at xAI in 2024, building large-scale computing systems required to train artificial intelligence chatbots

Sachin Katti's background and tenure

• ▪Prior to stepping down in October 2026, Sachin Katti had spent a more extensive portion of his career in academia than in operational leadership
• ▪Sachin Katti joined OpenAI in 2025 to oversee OpenAI's infrastructure unit and major data center developments

OpenAI infrastructure spending and expansion

• ▪OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman stated that OpenAI could spend trillions of dollars on physical infrastructure to develop artificial intelligence models and expand adoption
• ▪OpenAI partnered with SB Energy and Nvidia on an 8-gigawatt data center project in Ohio