Sachin Katti To Leave OpenAI After Leading Major Compute Expansion

Sachin Katti, who led compute infrastructure at OpenAI, will leave the company on November 15 to build something new, he announced on LinkedIn. He will continue supporting the company as an advisor.

Katti’s departure follows a year in which OpenAI secured double-digit gigawatts of compute capacity across several data centre projects and launched GPT Infra, a business focused on applying its models to semiconductor design and infrastructure. The company’s compute operations will now be led by Uday Ruddarraju, who reports to OpenAI President Greg Brockman.

“We secured double-digit gigawatts of new compute capacity across Ohio, Portsmouth, Georgia, Trainium and several other projects,” Katti wrote on LinkedIn, crediting partners including NVIDIA, Broadcom, AMD, Oracle, Microsoft, Google, AWS, Cerebras and CoreWeave for helping expand OpenAI’s infrastructure.

During Katti’s tenure, OpenAI advanced several infrastructure initiatives, including a reported $20 billion deal to use Cerebras AI chips and the development of its custom Jalapeno inference chip. He also oversaw computing agreements with SB Energy and the expansion of OpenAI’s deal with Amazon Web Services.

He joined OpenAI after serving as chief technology officer at Intel. He previously worked as a professor at Stanford University and built startups as an entrepreneur. He holds a PhD in computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a BTech in electrical engineering from IIT Bombay.

“AI is reshaping the entire computing stack, and I believe we’re still in the early innings,” Katti wrote, adding that he intends to combine his experience across academia, entrepreneurship, business leadership and infrastructure development to build something new.

OpenAI’s compute organisation develops the infrastructure roadmap needed to train and serve its models. The company is targeting roughly $600 billion in total compute spending by 2030 and is involved in major data centre projects across several US states.

Katti’s exit comes amid other leadership changes at OpenAI. Product and business chief Fidji Simo moved into an advisory role in July, while executives Brad Lightcap and Denise Dresser left in August. Infrastructure executives Chris Malone and Peter Hoeschele have also departed. Safety lead David Robinson resigned in October.