Announcing the update on LinkedIn, Ruddarraju said his first year at OpenAI has been a highly rewarding experience. He also highlighted OpenAI’s future plans to build one of the world’s largest computing infrastructures.
“We’re on a mission to build the world’s largest compute footprint so frontier AI can reach everyone and every workflow. We have a very exciting compute ramp and roadmap coming up,” he wrote.
Who is Uday Ruddarraju?
Ruddarraju completed his Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Chaitanya Bharathi Institute of Technology in India. Later, he moved to the United States and earned a Master’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Minnesota.
He began his career with technology internships, working with companies like Amazon and Capital IQ. He later joined eBay, where he spent more than five years working on cloud technology and software systems. During his time at eBay, he moved up from a software engineer role to become a technical lead.
In 2018, Ruddarraju joined Robinhood, a US-based financial services company. He worked there for six years and took on several leadership roles and eventually became Senior Director of Engineering and Head of Infrastructure.
In 2024, Ruddarraju joined Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI as Head of Infrastructure Engineering. Following his departure, he wrote on
After an unforgettable ride, I’ve decided to move on from @xai and yesterday was my last day.
When I first joined, I thought everyone was absolutely nuts for thinking we could deploy 100K GPUs in 4 months, especially without a fully functioning site. Watching us go and double…
— Uday Ruddarraju (@udayruddarraju) July 8, 2025
He joined OpenAI in 2025 as Head of Compute and Infrastructure. After working for around a year, he was promoted to CTO of Compute in July 2026.
