Does the institute you graduate from determine success in technology? Many IIT graduates would argue that it does. But the career of Uday Ruddarraju, OpenAI's newly appointed CTO of Compute, suggests otherwise.
Ruddarraju never attended an IIT, IIIT or NIT. Instead, he earned his Computer Science degree from Hyderabad's Chaitanya Bharathi Institute of Technology (CBIT), a college that remains relatively unknown outside Telangana and India.
Years later, he is now among the key leaders responsible for building the computing infrastructure that powers some of the world's most advanced artificial intelligence models.
His elevation comes just over a year after joining OpenAI as Head of Compute and Infrastructure.
Announcing the promotion on LinkedIn, Ruddarraju said he was excited to take on the new responsibility after spending his first year helping OpenAI rapidly expand the computing capacity required to train frontier AI models, including GPT-5.6.
"I'm excited to share that I'm stepping into the CTO, Compute role at OpenAI," he wrote.
"My first 12 months at OpenAI have been incredibly rewarding. We're on a mission to build the world's largest compute footprint so frontier AI can reach everyone and every workflow. We have a very exciting compute ramp and roadmap coming up."
He concluded the post by inviting engineers to join the company, writing, "We're hiring exceptional people across the stack. Come build with us."
Career journey
Although his academic background does not include an IIT, Ruddarraju has built an impressive career, aided by a Master's degree in Computer Science from the University of Minnesota.
After completing his undergraduate studies at CBIT, he worked as an intern at several companies, including Amazon, before moving to the United States for higher education.
Following his master's degree, he joined eBay in 2013 as a Software Engineer II in Cloud Infrastructure. During his five-and-a-half-year stint, he steadily progressed through the organisation, eventually becoming Senior Member of Technical Staff and Technical Lead for Cloud and Platforms.
At eBay, he played a role in developing the cloud infrastructure supporting one of the world's largest e-commerce platforms.
In 2018, Ruddarraju joined Robinhood as a Staff Software Engineer. Over nearly six years, he rose to become Senior Director of Engineering and Head of Infrastructure, leading the company's infrastructure organisation during a period of rapid growth and significant expansion in its user base.
In 2024, he moved to Elon Musk's xAI as Head of Infrastructure Engineering. Rather than working directly on AI models, his role focused on designing and scaling the massive computing systems needed to train them.
Building large-scale infrastructure has become Ruddarraju's area of expertise. Throughout his career, he has specialised in developing the underlying systems that enable artificial intelligence and cloud platforms to scale efficiently.
Instead of creating AI models, he focuses on the infrastructure beneath them, including massive GPU clusters, high-speed networking, storage systems and distributed computing platforms that make training frontier AI models possible.
That expertise led him to OpenAI in 2025 as Head of Compute and Infrastructure.
Just over a year later, he has been promoted to CTO, Compute, where he will oversee one of OpenAI's most critical initiatives—building what he describes as "the world's largest compute footprint" to support the next generation of artificial intelligence.
