OpenAI compute chief Sachin Katti to leave on Nov 15
Uday Ruddarraju takes over infrastructure and compute
Confirmed
The takeaway
It continues a run of departures from OpenAI’s data-center leadership while the company plans about $750B of compute spending through 2030 (WSJ).
Status
- Claim
Confirmed
- Our reporting
- High confidence
- Importance
- 2 of 5
- Last verified
- 14 October 2026
Your AI and this story
- GPT-6 Astra167 days after its cutoff
- Claude Opus 5.5106 days after its cutoff
- Gemini 4 Argon197 days after its cutoff
- Grok 4.7136 days after its cutoff
None of these four assistants can know about it. The closest, Claude Opus 5.5, stops 106 days before it.
Key facts
- Katti’s last day: Nov 15, 2026; he stays on as an adviser and says he is leaving to ‘build something new’ (LinkedIn, via PYMNTS)
- Katti joined OpenAI from Intel, where he was Chief Technology and AI Officer, in November 2025 (The Register, Nov 11, 2025)
- Katti’s own tally (via PYMNTS): OpenAI secured ‘double-digit gigawatts’ of new compute across several projects, and GPT-Infra went from idea to a business with customers in about three months
- Ruddarraju joined OpenAI in 2025 from xAI, where he led infrastructure engineering, and became CTO for compute in July 2026; he now leads both the infrastructure and compute units (Bloomberg via PYMNTS)
- Ruddarraju to Bloomberg: ‘Sachin has done an incredible job maintaining the commercial partnerships’; he said he now has to spend more time on the commercial side
- Earlier exits from the build-out team: Chris Malone (data-center build-out) left in August; Peter Hoeschele (Stargate) left for Meta earlier in 2026 (PYMNTS)
- WSJ: OpenAI expects to spend about $750B on compute through 2030, up from about $600B reported earlier in the year
What happened
OpenAI’s head of computing capacity, Sachin Katti, is leaving after about a year. The WSJ broke the news on Oct 14; Bloomberg reported the same day that Uday Ruddarraju, previously OpenAI’s CTO for compute, will run both the infrastructure and compute businesses. Katti stays as an adviser after Nov 15.
The WSJ and Bloomberg articles are paywalled; this entry uses PYMNTS’s summary of both and the CNBC headline. CNBC’s article page returned 403 and was not read.
Why it matters
Compute is OpenAI’s biggest cost and constraint. The person who negotiated its chip and data-center partnerships is leaving as the company plans roughly $750B of compute spending and after earlier exits of Stargate and data-center leaders.
Sources
5 sources from 5 sites. Numbers match the chips in the text.
5 sources: 5 press
Press
- WSJ: OpenAI computing chief to depart (Oct 14, paywalled)wsj.com, press
- Bloomberg: OpenAI names Uday Ruddarraju to lead data center computing unit (Oct 14, paywalled)bloomberg.com, press
- PYMNTS: OpenAI expands Uday Ruddarraju’s role to head compute and infrastructure unitspymnts.com, press
- CNBC: OpenAI’s Sachin Katti to leave infrastructure role, stay on as advisorcnbc.com, press
- The Register (Nov 11, 2025): Intel CTO and AI boss quits to join OpenAItheregister.com, press
Changes
- Filed