Uday Ruddarraju Named OpenAI CTO of Compute After xAI Infrastructure Role

Indian-origin technology executive Uday Ruddarraju has been elevated to the role of Chief Technology Officer of Compute at OpenAI, roughly one year after joining the artificial-intelligence company from Elon Musk’s xAI. The appointment places him in charge of one of the most important areas in modern AI development: the massive computing infrastructure needed to train, operate and deliver increasingly capable models. Compute in this context includes far more than purchasing advanced chips; it involves connecting large numbers of processors through high-speed networks, managing enormous volumes of data, building reliable storage and distributed systems, securing sufficient electricity and cooling, and developing data centres capable of running demanding AI workloads continuously. Ruddarraju said OpenAI’s compute team had spent the previous year bringing new capacity online while strengthening the networking, storage and machine-learning systems required to support frontier models. He also indicated that the company has an ambitious infrastructure roadmap covering large-scale distributed computing, hardware, manufacturing and data-centre construction across civil, electrical and mechanical engineering. Before joining OpenAI, Ruddarraju served as Head of Infrastructure Engineering at xAI and X, where he led teams working across computing, networking, storage, data platforms and production infrastructure. He was involved in building xAI’s Colossus supercomputer and supporting the large-scale training work behind Grok 3, an experience that established him as a prominent engineer in the rapidly growing AI-infrastructure sector. His career also includes several years at Robinhood, where he rose to infrastructure leadership, and an earlier technical role at eBay focused on cloud and platform systems. Ruddarraju studied computer science at Chaitanya Bharathi Institute of Technology in Hyderabad, completed an internship with Amazon Web Services while in college and later earned a master’s degree in computer science from the University of Minnesota. His rise at OpenAI highlights how the global AI competition increasingly depends not only on research and model design but also on the ability to build reliable computing capacity at an unprecedented scale. As CTO of Compute, Ruddarraju is expected to help guide the physical and digital foundation supporting OpenAI’s next generation of systems, while recruiting engineers and specialists across software, hardware, networking, manufacturing and data-centre operations. The promotion also marks a significant milestone for an Indian-origin technology leader whose career has moved from Hyderabad classrooms to some of the world’s most ambitious artificial-intelligence infrastructure projects.