This CBIT, Hyderabad Alumnus is Now OpenAI CTO; Read His Tremendous Journey here

Hyderabad's Uday Ruddarraju is OpenAI's new CTO of Compute. Breaking the conventional mold of only IITians breaking into the Silicon Valley, this alumnus from Chaitanya Bharathi Institute of Technology (CBIT) previously scaled infrastructure at eBay, Robinhood, and Elon Musk’s xAI. Find his journey here.

Read His Tremendous Journey here

From the alleys of Gandipet, to the skylines of San Francisco, the story of Uday Ruddarraju is one to look forward to with pride. OpenAI, in a major leadership move, has promoted Hyderabad-born engineer Uday Ruddarraju to the position of Chief Technology Officer (CTO). 

This comes as another example of an Indian-born talent breaking into the silicon valley. 

However, unlike previous IITians who broke into the AI-bandwagon in San Francisco, Uday’s rise highlights a remarkable journey rooted in a local engineering college in Telangana.

Unlike many of his high-ranking peers, Ruddarraju did not graduate from IIT, NIT, or IIIT. 

Uday Ruddarraju is Now OpenAI CTO, Compute

Instead, he completed his bachelor's degree in Computer Science at Chaitanya Bharathi Institute of Technology (CBIT) in Hyderabad. Following his graduation and an internship at Amazon, he moved to the US to earn a Master's degree in Computer Science from the University of Minnesota.

It was after his Master’s that Ruddarraju’s career saw a consistent focus on building heavy-duty tech foundations rather than consumer-facing applications, prior to working in OpenAI, he navigated his way through some of the top software giants with eBay, Robinhood and Elon Musk-backed xAi.

Uday’s Resume consists of eBay (2013-2018) where he joined as a Software Engineer II and rose to Technical Lead for Cloud and Platforms. He then switched roles to Robinhood (2018-2024) where he served as Senior Director of Engineering and Head of Infrastructure. 

After Robinhood, Elon Musk hired him for xAI in 2024 as Head of Infrastructure Engineering to construct the massive computing power required to train early xAI models.

Ruddarraju then joined OpenAI in 2025 as Head of Compute and Infrastructure. While working in OpenAI, he was instrumental in expanding its massive computing capacity needed to train OpenAI's latest frontier models, including upcoming GPT-5.6.

CBIT, Hyderabad Campus

Uday’s journey is testimony that to reach new heights, you need skills, temperament, and a zeal to innovate and explore, rather than a major college tag!

Follow Uday on X, to find out what he is building next!

Our Agentic Engineering Acceleration efforts just got a serious turbocharge. Excited about what’s ahead, will keep you all posted on internal progress we’re looking forward to sharing soon. https://t.co/d55bKC1E1A

— Uday Ruddarraju (@udayruddarraju) July 7, 2026