Intel’s Chief AI Officer Sachin Katti leaves company to join Sam Altman’s OpenAI

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Intel’s Chief Technology and Artificial Intelligence Officer, Sachin Katti, is leaving the chipmaker to join Sam Altman’s OpenAI — the company behind ChatGPT. Katti announced his move on X (formerly Twitter), saying he will be working on building OpenAI’s compute infrastructure for artificial general intelligence (AGI), a form of AI that aims to think and learn like humans.

“Very grateful for the tremendous opportunity and experience at Intel over the last four years leading networking, edge computing, and AI,” Katti wrote in his post. His departure marks another high-profile exit for Intel as it tries to strengthen its position in the AI chip market.

OpenAI’s president and co-founder, Greg Brockman, welcomed Katti in a post, saying he was “incredibly excited” to work with him on designing and building the company’s AI infrastructure — a system that will power OpenAI’s research and help scale its next-generation models.

At Intel, Katti was appointed as the company’s Chief Technology and AI Officer earlier this year by CEO Lip-Bu Tan, who will now take over leadership of the AI and Advanced Technologies Groups. Katti had also led Intel’s Network and Edge Group since early 2023, driving the company’s efforts in developing edge and cloud AI solutions.

In a statement, Intel confirmed Katti’s exit and said AI remains one of its “highest strategic priorities.” The company added that it will continue executing its product roadmap to support emerging AI workloads.

Katti’s departure comes as Intel continues to rebuild its AI business. The chipmaker recently revamped its data center strategy after falling short of its $500 million revenue goal for its Gaudi AI chips last year. At the 2025 OCP Global Summit, Intel unveiled a new 160GB energy-efficient data center GPU, part of a renewed annual release cycle focused on open architecture for AI systems.

A Stanford University professor and former startup founder, Katti has long been recognized for his work in wireless networks and machine learning at the edge — expertise that could now play a key role in OpenAI’s ambitious AGI roadmap.