- Uday Ruddaraju has been appointed as the new Chief Technology Officer, Compute at OpenAI, where he will lead efforts to build the world's largest compute footprint for AI.
- Ruddaraju announced his new role on LinkedIn on July 19, 2026, expressing excitement about his first year at OpenAI.
- Ruddaraju began his career with an internship at Amazon Web Services while studying engineering and later pursued a Master's in Computer Science at the University of Minnesota.
- He worked at eBay from 2013 to 2018 and then at Robinhood before joining xAI.
- Ruddaraju was among the key employees at xAI who transitioned to OpenAI amid intense competition for AI talent.
Uday Ruddaraju, an Indian-origin technology leader, has been appointed as the Chief Technology Officer, Compute at OpenAI, following his departure from Elon Musk's xAI last year. Ruddaraju announced his new role on LinkedIn, expressing excitement about the challenges ahead.12
Ruddaraju, who holds a BE in Computer Science from the Chaitanya Bharathi Institute of Technology in Hyderabad, joined OpenAI in July 2022. His career includes significant roles at eBay and Robinhood, and he has experience from an internship at Amazon Web Services.34
In his new position, Ruddaraju aims to lead the development of the world's largest compute footprint for AI, stating, "Our Compute team has worked relentlessly to bring capacity online quickly and reliably... As we scale, the problems only get harder that require pushing the frontiers and innovating across every layer (literally) of the stack," he said.
He emphasized the importance of expanding OpenAI's computing infrastructure to support frontier AI development, mentioning, "We have a very exciting compute ramp and roadmap coming up. There is a lot to build across large-scale distributed systems, hardware, manufacturing, and data centre builds spanning civil, mechanical, and electrical engineering. We're hiring exceptional people across the stack," he added.
Ruddaraju's appointment comes amid intense competition for AI talent, as he was among key employees who transitioned from xAI to OpenAI.
“Ruddaraju, who joined OpenAI last July after leaving Elon Musk's xAI, said the compute team's work involves training frontier models like GPT-5.6. He also announced a major compute ramp and hiring across the stack for large-scale distributed systems and data centre builds.”
