Uday Ruddaraju Takes Over as OpenAI CTO of Compute

Image Credit: linkedin.com/in/udaykumarraju

Indian-origin technology executive Uday Ruddaraju has been named OpenAI’s CTO of Compute, according to his reported LinkedIn announcement and media reports. The promotion comes about a year after he joined OpenAI from Elon Musk’s xAI and puts him in a key role overseeing the computing infrastructure behind the AI company’s frontier-model development.

Uday Ruddaraju has been promoted to CTO of Compute at OpenAI, about a year after moving to the artificial intelligence company from xAI, according to reports published by media outlets.

Ruddaraju reportedly announced the new role on LinkedIn while reflecting on his first 12 months at OpenAI. He said the company's Compute team had worked to bring additional computing capacity online while developing systems spanning compute, networking, storage and machine learning.

Before joining OpenAI, Ruddaraju served as Head of Infrastructure Engineering at Elon Musk’s xAI.

Uday Ruddaraju Takes OpenAI CTO of Compute

In his new position as OpenAI CTO of Compute, Ruddaraju is expected to play a central role in the infrastructure required to develop and operate increasingly compute-intensive AI systems.

According to his reported LinkedIn comments, OpenAI is working to significantly expand its compute footprint. He highlighted work across large-scale distributed systems, hardware, manufacturing and data-centre construction.

Ruddaraju joined OpenAI in 2025 after leaving xAI, where he had worked on infrastructure engineering.

Ruddaraju announced his new role on LinkedIn, according other published reports.

He said OpenAI's Compute team had spent the past year expanding capacity and working across computing, networking, storage and machine-learning infrastructure.

UpdatedPlus did not locate a separate official OpenAI press release announcing the appointment at the time of publication.

Computing infrastructure has become a critical part of competition among leading artificial intelligence companies. Training and operating increasingly capable AI models requires large-scale data centres, advanced chips, high-speed networks and substantial power capacity.

Ruddaraju's elevation to CTO of Compute highlights the strategic importance of infrastructure as OpenAI expands the systems supporting its AI development.

His experience at both xAI and OpenAI also places him among technology executives working directly on the large-scale computing systems underpinning the current generation of frontier AI.

Ruddaraju has indicated that OpenAI's Compute organisation plans to continue expanding infrastructure across distributed systems, hardware and data-centre development.

Further details about OpenAI's compute expansion are expected to emerge as the company develops and deploys future AI systems.