OpenAI Elevates Former xAI Infrastructure Chief as Compute Spending Race Accelerates

OpenAI has appointed Uday Ruddarraju, the engineer who built xAI's massive Colossus supercomputer, as Chief Technology Officer of Compute, signaling an aggressive expansion of its data-center footprint as the AI industry's infrastructure competition intensifies. Ruddarraju, who previously served as Head of Infrastructure Engineering at Elon Musk's xAI, takes over expanded responsibilities for distributed computing systems, networking, storage optimization, hardware integration, and large-scale data-center development across OpenAI's growing portfolio.