OpenAI taps ex-xAI exec Ruddarraju to lead compute unit as current chief departs

OpenAI has picked Uday Ruddarraju, a former xAI executive, to run its infrastructure and compute businesses. Bloomberg reported the move on Wednesday. Sachin Katti, who has overseen the infrastructure unit, will step out of the role over the next few weeks and then stay on as an adviser. The Wall Street Journal, which first reported Katti's exit, said he will leave next month after almost a year at the company. It is the latest leadership change in a division that plans to spend hundreds of billions of dollars in the coming years.wsj+1

From Colossus to Stargate

Ruddarraju came to OpenAI last year and was named chief technology officer for compute in July. Before that, he helped build Elon Musk's Colossus supercomputer cluster in Memphis. So did Brent Mayo, another xAI hire, who reports to him and is in charge of keeping OpenAI's computing projects on schedule.bloomberg+2

Katti, formerly Intel's ↘ 5.79% chief technology and AI officer, joined OpenAI in late 2025 to run the Stargate data center initiative. The project ran into early delays when talks with SoftBank Group and Oracle ↘ 4.64% fell through. OpenAI then struck separate deals with each company, and Katti also signed more computing agreements with providers including Amazon Web Services Amazon.com, Inc. ↘ 1.87%.mlq+1

A string of departures

Katti is not the first senior figure to leave the group. In August, Chris Malone, OpenAI's head of data centers, left after a reorganization that had moved his reporting line from President Greg Brockman to Katti. At the time, a spokesperson said the company had "recently reorganized our infrastructure organization to support the scale and pace of our work." TechCrunch described Malone's exit as part of a "stream of high-profile departures."techcrunch+1

Rising spending plans

The changes come as OpenAI's computing ambitions keep growing. In July, the Journal reported that the company had raised its projected spending on computing power to about \$750 billion through 2030, up from roughly \$600 billion earlier in the year. That report cited a person familiar with the projections. The company has also committed \$20 billion to a new data center project in Georgia. Katti said OpenAI has contracted with Georgia Power to receive 3.2 gigawatts of power between 2028 and 2032.finance.yahoo+1