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About 1 year after joining: OpenAI infrastructure and AI compute lead Katie departs, had led 'Stargate' project
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According to an October 15 report from IT Home, Sachin Katti, OpenAI's head of infrastructure and AI compute, announced his resignation on the X platform on October 14. His vacancy will be filled by Uday Ruddarraju. People familiar with the matter revealed that after leaving, Katti is expected to continue as an advisor and maintain cooperation with the company. This change comes at a critical stage of OpenAI's compute expansion.
Public information shows that Katti left his role as Intel's CTO to join OpenAI in November 2025, and had been at the company for about a year. During his tenure, he led efforts to advance the Stargate data center plan. The plan aims to expand OpenAI's AI compute foundation. He also pushed for compute resource partnerships with major suppliers such as SoftBank, Oracle, and Amazon AWS.
Successor Ruddarraju joined OpenAI in July 2025. He previously served as head of infrastructure engineering at Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company xAI. Earlier this summer, he had just been promoted to OpenAI's Chief Technology Officer for compute capacity. This succession means OpenAI will continue to rely on his experience in infrastructure and compute scheduling.
Katti's departure is the latest example in OpenAI's recent dense wave of executive departures. Over the past few months, core senior executives including the company's product and business lead Fidji Simo, veteran executive Brad Lightcap, revenue lead Denise Dresser, and safety systems team lead David Robinson have left one after another. These departures involve multiple key lines, including product, business, revenue, and safety.
Regarding executive changes, OpenAI President Greg Brockman once said that because the company is in the spotlight, every departure will be subject to unprecedented strict scrutiny. He believes that this diversity and resilience in management will instead make the company stronger. This statement is regarded as a response to the recent personnel turmoil.
From the perspective of business impact, the infrastructure and compute affairs overseen by Katti are directly related to OpenAI's large-model training and inference capabilities. His departure and the successor arrangement may affect the pace of advancing the Stargate plan and cooperation with external suppliers. However, the company retaining his advisor role may help related projects transition smoothly.
At present, OpenAI has not disclosed further details of personnel adjustments. As competition in AI compute continues to heat up, the replacement of the infrastructure head will attract industry attention. Whether Ruddarraju can continue existing cooperation and advance the data center plan will become an important window for observing OpenAI's future compute layout.
