OpenAI's infrastructure lead, Sachin Katti, announced on Wednesday that he is departing his role after roughly a year at the artificial intelligence company.
Katti said in a post on LinkedIn that he "decided to move on to build something new," and he'll continue to support OpenAI as an advisor after his last day on Nov. 15. Uday Ruddarraju, who has been serving as OpenAI's CTO of compute, will replace Katti and lead the company's overall compute organization, according to a spokesperson.
"Building AI infrastructure at this scale has given me an incredible view into every dimension of the compute world, from silicon and systems to datacenters, energy, supply chains, financing, and the economics of AI," Katti wrote. "I'm enormously proud of what our teams accomplished together and grateful to the partners who helped make it possible."
OpenAI's compute organization is crucial to its overall strategy; it's tasked with developing the company's infrastructure roadmap and ensuring that it can train and serve its models. OpenAI is targeting roughly $600 billion in total compute spend by 2030, and it's involved with massive, multi-billion-dollar data center projects in states like Ohio, Texas and Georgia.
The latest leadership shakeup lands during a tense moment for AI infrastructure in the U.S., where backlash against data centers has mounted over concerns about noise, electricity rates and water consumption. The issue has become a flashpoint in the upcoming midterm elections, where both Republican and Democratic candidates have campaigned against the facilities.