Intel's CTO and AI chief leaves for OpenAI after just seven months in role — follows another AI data center exec out the door, Lip Bu-Tan to take up the slack

Intel's Chief Technology Officer and head of AI, Sachin Katti, has left the longtime chip manufacturer and joined OpenAI instead, as reported by Reuters. He'll be taking over the role of building out OpenAI's compute infrastructure. Back at Intel, CEO Lip Bu-Tan will take on the role of head of AI and Advanced Technologies himself, "working closely with the team."

Since the appointment of Intel CEO Lip Bu-Tan in March, he's been on a tear, cutting the workforce by tens of thousands and courting the Trump administration in an effort to rebrand Intel as a chip design and fabrication firm, as well as one that produces its own silicon. Katti was reshuffled from Intel's Network and Edge group at the time to take on the role of CTO and AI Officer, but just seven months on, he's leaving for greener AI pastures.

"We thank Sachin for his contributions and wish him all the best. Lip-Bu will lead the AI and Advanced Technologies Groups, working closely with the team," Intel said in a statement. "AI remains one of Intel’s highest strategic priorities, and we are focused on executing our technology and product roadmap across emerging AI workloads."

Although OpenAI hasn't released a public company statement, President Greg Brockman did say on Twitter/X that Katti would be taking over OpenAI's compute infrastructure planning and building, helping to scale up OpenAI's backend to power future services. The move follows news just last week that Katti's direct report, Saurabh Kulkarni, has left his role as vice president of data center AI product management at Intel. The unconfirmed report claims Kulkarni is headed to AMD.

Although CEO Lip Bu-Tan taking on the AI chief role shows his commitment and seriousness of the position, losing such a key position at this time is a poor look for Intel. It has struggled to remain relevant in the consumer and data center CPU space for several generations of hardware, and though having the US government on its shareholder list does give it some serious backing, its identity in the new AI world isn't yet clear. Its NPUs are capable, but not standouts, and it has yet to secure a major customer for its cutting-edge silicon.

Katti is biting off a lot with the new OpenAI position, too. With hundreds of billions in infrastructure promised, Katti is coming on board at the time of one of the largest rollouts of hardware and investment dollars the world has ever seen. He'll be overseeing some of the largest projects ever envisaged, and the challenges when it comes to finding the money, chips, power, and water to manage them are far from trivial. Perhaps government backstops wouldn't be such a bad plan after all.

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