Meet Uday Ruddaraju, OpenAI's new Indian-origin CTO of Compute
What's the story
OpenAI has appointed Indian-origin tech leader Uday Ruddaraju as its new Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Compute. The appointment comes just a year after he joined the company from xAI, where he was the head of Infrastructure Engineering. In his new role at OpenAI, Ruddaraju will be responsible for building and scaling systems for next-generation models like GPT-5.6.
Future plans
'Incredibly rewarding journey' so far, says Ruddaraju
Ruddaraju shared his thoughts on the journey so far at OpenAI, calling it "incredibly rewarding."
He praised the Compute team for their hard work in quickly and reliably bringing capacity online.
He also highlighted the deep systems across compute, network, storage, and ML work needed to train frontier models like GPT-5.6.
The new CTO of Compute said as they scale up, the problems only get harder requiring innovation across every layer of the stack.
AI accessibility
'On a mission to build world's largest compute footprint'
Ruddaraju said, "We're on a mission to build the world's largest compute footprint so frontier AI can reach everyone and every workflow."
He hinted at an exciting compute ramp and roadmap in the future.
The new CTO of Compute said, "There is a lot to build across large scale distributed systems, hardware, manufacturing, and data center builds spanning civil, mechanical, and electrical engineering."
Career trajectory
Ruddaraju's career path before joining OpenAI
Ruddaraju studied Computer Science at Chaitanya Bharathi Institute of Technology in Hyderabad, not an IIT or NIT.
He got an internship at Amazon Web Services while still in college and later moved to the US for a Master's degree in Computer Science from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities.
His career includes stints at eBay, Robinhood, and xAI before joining OpenAI last year.