OpenAI’s head of industrial computing, Sachin Katti, is leaving the company.

CNBC reported on Oct. 14 that Katti will step down from the role he has held for about a year and depart on Nov. 15. He will support OpenAI as an adviser afterward.

His successor is Uday Rudaraju, the current chief technology officer for compute. An OpenAI spokesperson said Rudaraju will lead the company’s overall compute organisation in Katti’s place. The compute organisation is a core division that sets OpenAI’s infrastructure roadmap and secures resources needed for model training and service operations.

In a LinkedIn post, Katti said he decided to leave to start something new. He said building AI infrastructure at this scale gave him a view across semiconductors and systems, data centres, energy, supply chains, financing and overall AI economics. He said he is very proud of what the team achieved. He added that he is, by nature, someone who builds things and looks forward to making something new.

The appointment is drawing attention as it coincides with OpenAI’s strategy of large-scale infrastructure investment. OpenAI has set total compute spending at about $600 billion through 2030 and is pursuing multibillion-dollar data-centre projects in Ohio, Texas and Georgia, among other locations. The organisation influences not only competition over model performance but also the pace of service expansion, making the leadership change significant.

Rudaraju joined OpenAI in July last year. Before that, he led infrastructure engineering at Elon Musk’s xAI, and xAI was acquired by SpaceX earlier this year. In a separate statement, Katti said he feels proud of the foundation he built and expressed full trust that Rudaraju and the team will carry it forward.

The departure extends a series of OpenAI executive exits this year. In July, the head of product and business, Fidji Simo, said she would move into an adviser role to focus on recovering as an underlying illness worsened. The following month, Brad Lightcap and chief revenue officer Denise Dresser also left the company.

Against this backdrop, OpenAI has maintained that leadership changes are not unusual. At the time, president Greg Brockman said that in a young company, different leadership combinations can appear at different times. He said Sam Altman and he are staying in place and that the company has become stronger thanks to such resilience and diversity.

The leadership change comes as tensions in the United States over AI infrastructure have increased. Opposition has grown over noise, electricity bills and water use linked to data centres, and the issue has emerged as a point of contention during the midterm election period. OpenAI now faces the task of managing organisational stability and external burdens as it continues large-scale compute investment and data-centre expansion.