OpenAI has brought in four well-known engineers from rival companies, stepping up its efforts to strengthen its core infrastructure and stay ahead in the AI race. Among the new hires are Uday Ruddarraju, former head of infrastructure engineering at Elon Musk’s xAI, and David Lau, who was a senior software leader at Tesla. The hiring comes at a time when Meta, another major AI player, is aggressively pulling talent from competitors, including OpenAI itself.
The new appointments were announced through an internal Slack message by Greg Brockman, OpenAI’s cofounder who also leads its scaling team. This team is responsible for handling the complex backend systems and data centres that power the company’s most advanced AI models. While ChatGPT and other user-facing tools grab headlines, it is the work of this internal team that ensures OpenAI’s systems run efficiently and are ready to handle even more powerful models in the future.
Besides Ruddarraju and Lau, OpenAI has also hired Mike Dalton, who previously worked at xAI and Robinhood, and Angela Fan, an AI researcher from Meta. These engineers bring with them a strong background in large-scale computing infrastructure. In fact, Ruddarraju and Dalton played key roles in building Colossus, a massive supercomputer at xAI made up of more than 200,000 GPUs. Their experience is likely to be put to use in OpenAI’s Stargate project, a joint venture focused on building next-generation AI infrastructure.
OpenAI confirmed the new hires and shared that the company aims to keep expanding its world-class teams in research, infrastructure and product development. “We’re excited to welcome these new members to our scaling team,” said OpenAI spokesperson Hannah Wong.
Ruddarraju, in a comment to Wired, described Stargate as a high-stakes infrastructure challenge that aligns well with the kind of ambitious work he enjoys doing. Lau, on the other hand, mentioned that working towards building safe and well-aligned artificial general intelligence (AGI) felt like the most meaningful goal he could pursue at this stage in his career.
This fresh round of hiring comes at a time when OpenAI is facing tough competition from Meta in the battle for talent. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has reportedly managed to attract several engineers from OpenAI, offering high salaries and easy access to computing power, two things that are increasingly hard to come by in the AI space. In response, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has reportedly told staff that the company may consider raising compensation for researchers to remain competitive.
Meta’s hiring push hasn’t stopped at OpenAI. Reports also suggest that Zuckerberg’s company has approached members of Thinking Machines Lab—a startup led by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati and cofounder John Schulman—making it clear that the competition is no longer just about technology, but also about building the strongest possible team.
Meanwhile, tensions between OpenAI and Elon Musk continue to simmer. Musk, who co-founded OpenAI in 2015 and left in 2018 over disagreements on the company’s direction, is currently suing the organisation. He claims that OpenAI has strayed from its original nonprofit mission after taking major investments from Microsoft. In return, OpenAI has countersued Musk, accusing him of disrupting its work and trying to damage its reputation.
While the spotlight is often on AI tools like ChatGPT, the real game-changer lies in infrastructure. OpenAI and its rivals are betting big on building the best backend systems, because more data and stronger computing power are what make AI models smarter and more capable. With engineers like Ruddarraju and Lau now on board, OpenAI seems to be preparing for the next leap, possibly in pursuit of AGI, a milestone that everyone in the industry wants to reach first.
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