OpenAI Taps Intel’s Sachin Katti to Build Compute Backbone for AGI
The Stanford professor-turned-executive joins OpenAI as compute capacity becomes the defining battleground in the race for AGI.
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[Image source: Chetan Jha/MITSMR India]
OpenAI has appointed Sachin Katti, former Chief Technology and AI Officer at Intel Corp., to head its compute infrastructure division, a critical role as the company intensifies its push toward artificial general intelligence (AGI).
Intel confirmed Katti’s departure in a statement and said its new CEO Lip‑Bu Tan will personally oversee the AI and Advanced Technologies Groups until a successor is named.
On his personal X account, Katti wrote: “Excited for the opportunity to work with @gdb, @sama and the @OpenAI team on building out the compute infrastructure for AGI. Very grateful for the tremendous opportunity and experience at Intel over the last 4 years leading networking, edge computing and AI.”
OpenAI President Greg Brockman posted on X that Katti will focus on “designing and building our compute infrastructure, which will power our AGI research and scale its applications to benefit everyone.”
Katti had joined Intel roughly four years ago and rose through roles, including leading the networking and edge‑computing business, before being promoted to CTO and AI chief in April amid a leadership restructure led by Tan.
Before his industry roles, Katti spent nearly 15 years as a professor and researcher at Stanford University, specializing in computer networking and systems.
His departure comes as Intel undergoes a significant transformation under Tan, who has been reshaping the company’s top leadership to regain competitiveness in the AI and semiconductor markets.
The restructuring includes the appointment of former Arm executive Kevork Kechichian to lead Intel’s data center business, along with expanded responsibilities for Naga Chandrasekaran, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology and Operations Officer, to strengthen the company’s foundry operations.
“AI remains one of Intel’s highest strategic priorities,” the company said. “We continue to execute on our roadmap for emerging AI workloads.”
For OpenAI, Katti’s appointment marks a deeper push into the hardware side of AI as compute infrastructure fast becomes a non‑software frontier in the race for AGI.
