OpenAI has promoted Sachin Katti to vice president of Compute Strategy & GPT-Infra, a role that unites commercial compute strategy with product development for the infrastructure powering its AI models. The appointment, announced by Katti on LinkedIn, reflects the company's push to secure more compute capacity and improve the economics of large-scale AI deployments as enterprise adoption accelerates.
Katti said his immediate priorities include expanding OpenAI's access to compute, bringing new infrastructure online faster, improving deployment economics, and maximizing returns on infrastructure investments. He will also lead GPT-Infra product initiatives that apply OpenAI's own models to optimize semiconductors, systems, and cloud infrastructure.
The recursive infrastructure opportunity
Katti described a "powerful recursive opportunity" in using AI to design and scale the next generation of infrastructure. "Using the AI we're building to help design, optimize, and scale the next generation of infrastructure that future AI systems will depend on," he said. He added that the next era of AI will depend on infrastructure built with the same ambition as the models themselves.
From Intel to OpenAI
Katti joined OpenAI in late 2025 and has led compute initiatives since then. Before that, he served as chief technology and AI officer at Intel, where he shaped the company's AI, networking, and edge computing strategy. He also held senior vice president and general manager roles at Intel's Network and Edge Group. Katti continues to serve as an adjunct professor at Stanford University, focusing on computer systems, networking, and AI.
Strategic context
The promotion comes as AI companies race to lock in compute capacity and drive infrastructure efficiency. Rising model complexity and costs have made compute strategy a critical investment area. By combining compute strategy and GPT-Infra under one leader, OpenAI is signaling a focus on optimizing every layer of the AI infrastructure stack-from semiconductors to cloud platforms.
For enterprises and technology partners, the move shows that AI infrastructure is becoming a strategic differentiator. Vendors are investing not only in larger models but also in the compute platforms and systems needed to deploy AI efficiently at scale. This shift underscores the growing importance of infrastructure decisions, a topic central to AI for Executives & Strategy.
Why this matters for executives and strategy
Katti's expanded role highlights a reality that enterprise leaders must internalize: the next wave of AI capability won't come from models alone. Infrastructure economics-how fast you can bring compute online, at what cost, and with what efficiency-will determine which organizations can deploy generative AI at scale. Executives planning AI roadmaps should pay as much attention to infrastructure strategy as to model selection.
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