Indian-origin engineer Uday Ruddarraju has been promoted to Chief Technology Officer (CTO), Compute, at OpenAI, putting a Hyderabad-born technology leader at the centre of the artificial intelligence company's rapidly expanding computing infrastructure.
The appointment comes as OpenAI scales the massive compute systems needed to train and run increasingly sophisticated AI models such as ChatGPT. As CTO, Compute, Ruddarraju will lead the engineering teams responsible for the networking, storage and large-scale distributed infrastructure that power the company's AI research and products.
Ruddarraju shared the news in a LinkedIn post, describing the promotion as a milestone after completing his first year at OpenAI. He said the company had significantly expanded its compute capacity while building the systems required to train frontier AI models.
"We're on a mission to build the world's largest compute footprint," he wrote, adding that OpenAI has an ambitious infrastructure roadmap ahead.
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From Hyderabad To The Heart Of AI
Originally from Hyderabad, Ruddarraju has spent more than a decade building large-scale technology infrastructure across some of Silicon Valley's leading companies.
He was working as the Head of Infrastructure Engineering at Elon Musk's xAI before joining OpenAI in 2025. There, he was heading the team that built Colossus, xAI's supercomputer, powered by 2.5 lakh GPUs.
Prior to xAI, he was at Robinhood from 2018 to 2023. He joined as a staff software engineer at Robinhood in 2018, and in January 2023, he left the company as a Senior Director of Engineering & Head of Infrastructure.
Uday holds a Bachelor of Engineering from Chaitanya Bharathi Institute of Technology and a Master of Science in Computer Science from the University of Minnesota.
Why His New Role Matters?
Ruddarraju's promotion also highlights how computing infrastructure is becoming one of the biggest competitive advantages in the AI race.
As AI models grow larger and require exponentially more computing power, companies are investing billions of dollars in data centres, advanced chips and networking technologies. OpenAI has made compute a strategic priority as it expands its research capabilities and commercial AI offerings.
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