OpenAI names Uday Ruddarraju to run compute and Stargate, replacing Katti

OpenAI has named Uday Ruddarraju to lead its infrastructure and compute businesses, putting its Stargate data center program and other buildout work under him, Data Center Dynamics reported.

He replaces Sachin Katti, who is expected to remain as an adviser. Bloomberg first reported the promotion.

Ruddarraju is an internal promotion rather than an outside hire. He joined OpenAI in July 2025 as head of compute and infrastructure and was named CTO of Compute this July, according to the report. The report describes him as a former xAI executive who earlier served as head of infrastructure engineering at SpaceX.

Katti joined OpenAI from Intel in November 2025 and took over the Stargate effort in March. Four data center heads — Peter Hoeschele, Keith Heyde, Shamez Hemani and Chris Malone — left after that promotion, per the report.

Several former xAI employees now work under Ruddarraju. Brent Mayo, OpenAI's head of data center build and delivery, is one of the former xAI employees now in the division, along with former xAI site lead Aakash Verma and infrastructure staffer Amin Golnabi. Michael Roberson, xAI's former lead commissioning engineer, joined OpenAI's infrastructure division this month, the report adds.

OpenAI projects about $750 billion in compute spending through 2030, up from an earlier estimate of $600bn, an increase of about $150bn. Under Katti, the company expanded cloud partnerships as its in-house data center projects stayed slow to come online, the report says.