Who is Uday Ruddarraju, Indian-origin techie who quit Elon Musk's startup xAI to join OpenAI

UNI

Monday, 14 July 2025 (12:17 IST)
New Delhi: Uday Ruddarraju, who has resigned from Elon Musk's startup xAI, is set to join OpenAI.
 
Indian-origin Ruddarraju resigned as head of infrastructure engineering yesterday from Tesla Chief's company startup xAI.
 
His resignation comes two days after X CEO Linda Yaccarino announced her resignation just months after the social media platform was acquired by the billionaire’s AI startup, xAI.
 
Ruddarraju was instrumental in leading the training of the AI model Grok 3. It is a reasoning-based model that surpassed its previous competitors.
 
Ruddarraju has completed his Master’s in Computer Science from the University of Minnesota. He previously worked in engineering roles at eBay and Robinhood.In 2024, Uday joined as the head of Infrastructure Engineering of xAI.
 
In a post on X, Ruddarraju praised Elon Musk and his team for their determination to achieve targets.
 
He also pointed to his small efforts at xAI in building the future of AI computers.
 
After resigning from his post, Uday confirmed that he is heading to OpenAI. His departure from OpenAI is a big jolt to xAI central teams, which are working in departments of research and computing.
 
Uday is also credited with the creation of 'Colossus' in his tenure at the company. Colossus is the name given to the massive AI supercomputer developed by xAI. It’s currently the world’s largest AI supercomputer, located in Memphis, Tennessee.

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