OpenAI is changing who runs its infrastructure, again. Sachin Katti, the executive who arrived from Intel in November 2025 to lead the company’s large-scale data center projects, is stepping down from his operational role.
He isn’t leaving entirely. Katti will move into an advisory position after November 15, 2026. That means the person who helped steer projects including Stargate will soon be offering guidance rather than signing off on construction plans.
The timing matters because OpenAI’s compute bill keeps getting bigger. The company’s projected spending on computing power now sits at approximately $750 billion through 2030.
Who takes the wheel
Uday Ruddarraju will now lead OpenAI’s infrastructure and compute businesses. He has served as the company’s CTO of Compute since July 2026.
Before OpenAI, Ruddarraju was an executive at xAI, where he led infrastructure engineering efforts on xAI and SpaceX-related projects.
Katti has expressed confidence in Ruddarraju’s leadership as the handoff takes shape.
Ruddarraju’s mandate combines two areas, infrastructure and compute, under a single leader. In practical terms, one person will be responsible for both the buildings and the machines inside them.
A revolving door in the data center team
Katti’s move is not an isolated event. Several high-profile executives left OpenAI’s data center operations earlier in 2026, including Peter Hoeschele and Chris Malone.
Building facilities for advanced AI model training and inference is an expensive, slow and unforgiving business. Training is how a model learns. Inference is the everyday work of answering user requests once the model is live. Both consume enormous amounts of compute, and both require hardware that has to be housed, powered and cooled somewhere.
The numbers keep climbing
OpenAI’s compute spending projection has risen to approximately $750 billion through 2030. The earlier estimate was approximately $600 billion.
CEO Sam Altman has gone further, discussing the potential for total infrastructure investment to reach into the trillions.
What this means
Ruddarraju arrives with relevant experience and an existing seat at the table as CTO of Compute. Keeping Katti as an advisor also preserves institutional knowledge about projects like Stargate that he helped lead.
Repeated departures from the data center group, including Hoeschele, Malone and now Katti in an operational sense, suggest the physical side of OpenAI’s business is where the strain shows up first.
Ruddarraju’s background at xAI means OpenAI has now hired infrastructure leadership out of a direct rival.
What to watch next: whether the November 15, 2026 handoff proceeds smoothly, whether further changes follow in the data center team, and whether the approximately $750 billion projection holds or gets revised again.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Diego Almada Lopez. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.