Uday Ruddarraju, who was the Head of Infrastructure Engineering at xAI—the artificial intelligence startup founded by Tesla head Elon Musk—has officially resigned from his position, ending a little more than a year of employment at the company.
Speaking to X on Tuesday, Ruddarraju reflected on his work at xAI, where he was instrumental in the development of Colossus, a massive supercomputer composed of over 200,000 GPUs. He also took part in the building and training of Grok 3, the firm's latest AI model.
"Following an epic ride, I'm leaving xAI and yesterday was the last day. Joining, I used to think that everyone was completely crazy to assume that we'd get 100K GPUs up in 4 months, much less without a site that worked properly. Seeing us go and doubling it, and most importantly, getting Grok 3 trained successfully. made me really proud. and really glad to be proved wrong," Ruddarraju said.
He extended warm gratitude to both Elon Musk and the rest of the xAI team. "Thanks to Elon Musk and all the people at xAI for the unusual chance to assist in building something so fundamental with Colossus. It was an honor to work on a mission so ambitious and observe firsthand what dogged dedication and execution actually mean. Working under Elon and learning directly from him was certainly the highlight of being at xAI," he said.
Ruddarraju also complimented his teammates, especially those in the infrastructure and research groups: "Special thanks to all on the infrastructure team who achieved impossible expectations, and the whole research team for your collaboration along the way. You're the best! I am certain constructing Colossus and training Grok 3 are certainly career highlights I will never forget."
Immediately after his departure from xAI, Ruddarraju shifted to OpenAI, a pioneering firm in artificial intelligence research and deployment. His shift was announced by OpenAI President and Co-Founder Greg Brockman, who shared on X: "welcome david lau, mike dalton, uday ruddarraju, and angela fan!"
Ruddarraju attested to the update by sharing Brockman's tweet with the caption, "Excited to join you, Greg Brockman!"
His exit came hot on the heels of another high-profile departure—that of X CEO Linda Yaccarino. She made it known she was leaving the company, originally Twitter, only a few days after Ruddarraju made his announcement. Yaccarino appreciated Musk for giving her the responsibility of being the defender of free speech and assisting in transforming the platform into the "Everything App" as she put it.
Yaccarino became the chair in 2023, roughly six months after Musk took over the platform. She previously worked as a chair for global advertising and partnerships at NBCUniversal Media, as reported by The Hill.
Her departure also aligns with reports that Musk is set to merge X with xAI, as reported by The Hill.
Read also| India Set to Join World's Top 10 Tech Markets by 2025, Tops in Talent Availability
