Top xAI Engineer Uday Ruddarraju Joins OpenAI AI Infrastructure Team

Uday Ruddarraju, the key engineer behind xAI's Colossus supercomputer, has left Elon Musk's AI company to join OpenAI, marking a significant talent shift in the AI industry. Ruddarraju helped design and scale Colossus, a massive system with over 200,000 GPUs that powers xAI's Grok 3 model, and expressed deep appreciation for his experience working directly under Musk. At OpenAI, he is expected to contribute to Stargate, an ambitious infrastructure project aimed at supporting next-generation AI models, alongside other high-profile hires such as former Tesla and Meta experts. This move highlights the fierce competition among leading AI firms like OpenAI, xAI, and Meta to acquire top-tier engineers and build powerful AI systems amid an escalating AI talent war. The broader context sees elite AI talent commanding lucrative offers, even as the tech industry faces widespread layoffs due to automation and AI advancements. These dynamics reflect a historic pattern of tech wars over talent and innovation, now intensified around AI’s transformative potential.