Does the institute matter on the planet of know-how? Graduates from IIT like to say that it does. However for those who ask Uday Ruddarraju, the brand new CTO of Compute at OpenAI, he would possibly say it doesn’t. That’s as a result of Ruddarraju, who by no means went to any IIT, has steadily risen the ranks in a number of the greatest tech corporations in Silicon Valley. And now he’s a CTO at OpenAI, a job that may be thought of one of the crucial essential roles on the planet of tech and AI proper now.
Ruddarraju shouldn’t be even from an IIIT or an NIT. As an alternative, OpenAI’s new CTO, Uday Ruddarraju, studied Pc Science at Hyderabad’s Chaitanya Bharathi Institute of Know-how (CBIT), a school that many exterior Telangana, and even perhaps exterior India, could also be listening to about for the primary time.
Nonetheless, years after graduating from CBIT, Ruddarraju is now one of many engineers answerable for constructing the large computing infrastructure behind a number of the world’s most superior AI fashions.
Ruddarraju’s promotion comes simply over a 12 months after he joined OpenAI as Head of Compute and Infrastructure.
Asserting the promotion on LinkedIn, he stated he was “excited” to step into the brand new position after spending his first 12 months serving to OpenAI quickly develop the compute capability wanted to coach frontier AI fashions comparable to GPT-5.6.
“I’m excited to share that I’m entering into the CTO, Compute position at OpenAI,” wrote Ruddarraju. “My first 12 months at OpenAI have been extremely rewarding. We’re on a mission to construct the world’s largest compute footprint so frontier AI can attain everybody and each workflow. We now have a really thrilling compute ramp and roadmap developing.”
And since it’s LinkedIn, he ended his put up with a pitch for OpenAI. “We’re hiring distinctive folks throughout the stack. Come construct with us,” he wrote.
OpenAI CTO Uday Ruddarraju’s profession graph
Whereas IIT shouldn’t be there in his resume, Ruddarraju’s profession graph is spectacular, because of his Masters from a US college. Changing into OpenAI’s CTO is much from an in a single day success story for him.
After finishing his Pc Science diploma at CBIT, Ruddarraju took up just a few internships, together with one as a software program engineering intern at Amazon. He then moved to the US to pursue a Grasp’s diploma in Pc Science on the College of Minnesota.
After graduating, he joined eBay full-time in 2013 as a Software program Engineer II, Cloud Infrastructure. Over the following 5 years and 7 months, he steadily climbed the ranks, finally changing into Senior Member of Technical Employees and Technical Lead, Cloud and Platforms.
Throughout his time at eBay, he helped construct the cloud infrastructure powering one of many world’s largest e-commerce platforms.
In 2018, he moved to Robinhood, the place he spent practically six years throughout one of many firm’s fastest-growing phases. Beginning as a Employees Software program Engineer, he rose to turn out to be Senior Director of Engineering and Head of Infrastructure, main the corporate’s infrastructure organisation by way of intervals of speedy growth and explosive person development.
In 2024, Elon Musk employed him as Head of Infrastructure Engineering at xAI. His job wasn’t to construct AI chatbots or design new fashions. As an alternative, he was answerable for one thing simply as crucial: constructing the big computing methods required to coach them.
In some ways, that has turn out to be Ruddarraju’s speciality. Wherever AI or cloud infrastructure must scale quickly, he has usually been the engineer trusted to construct it.
Not like AI researchers who develop new fashions, Ruddarraju builds the invisible methods beneath them, monumental GPU clusters, high-speed networking, storage infrastructure and distributed computing platforms that permit corporations like OpenAI to coach frontier AI fashions.
That experience introduced him to OpenAI in 2025 as Head of Compute and Infrastructure. Simply over a 12 months later, he has been promoted to CTO, Compute, the place he’ll oversee one of many firm’s most essential missions of constructing what he describes as “the world’s largest compute footprint” to energy the following technology of AI.
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