OpenAI Names Uday Ruddarraju to Lead Compute and Stargate as Sachin Katti Leaves

OpenAI has appointed Uday Ruddarraju to lead its infrastructure and compute businesses, including its Stargate data centre project, Data Center Dynamics (DCD) reported on 14 October 2026. He replaces Sachin Katti, who is leaving. DCD said Bloomberg reported the promotion first. The Wall Street Journal ran a story the same day headlined “OpenAI Computing Chief to Depart”.

Who is taking over

According to DCD, Ruddarraju joined OpenAI in July 2025 as head of compute and infrastructure and was named its CTO of Compute in July 2026. Before that, he was head of infrastructure engineering at xAI.

DCD reported that Katti joined OpenAI from Intel in November 2025 and took over the Stargate data centre effort in March 2026.

The size of the job

DCD said that under Katti, OpenAI expanded its cloud partnerships while its own data centre projects were slow to come online. In DCD’s words, the company “projects spending about $750 billion on computing power through 2030, up from an earlier estimate of roughly $600bn.”

DCD also reported that Ruddarraju’s data centre team has taken on a growing number of former xAI staff.

What this means

• A new hand on compute. OpenAI’s huge data centre plans now have a new leader.
• More change at the top. This is another shake-up of OpenAI’s compute leadership.
• The stakes are high. DCD puts OpenAI’s planned compute spending at about $750bn through 2030.

Sources

1. Data Center Dynamics, “OpenAI again shakes up compute leadership, with xAI exec Uday Ruddarraju to lead and Sachin Katti to leave”, Sebastian Moss, 14 October 2026. https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/openai-again-shakes-up-compute-leadership-with-xai-exec-uday-ruddarraju-to-lead-and-sachin-katti-to-leave/
2. Bloomberg, first report as cited by DCD, 14 October 2026. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-10-14/openai-names-uday-ruddarraju-to-lead-data-center-computing-unit
3. The Wall Street Journal, “OpenAI Computing Chief to Depart”, 14 October 2026. https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/openai-computing-chief-to-depart-6ffb7d7e

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