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Who is Srinivas Narayanan? Indian-origin OpenAI CTO quits after 3 years, plans return to India
Sharing a message addressed to his team, Srinivas Narayanan described his time at OpenAI as “an incredible journey that felt more like ten years”.
Indian-origin tech leader Srinivas Narayanan, who currently serves as Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for B2B Applications at OpenAI, has announced that he will be stepping down from his role next week.
In a post on X, Narayanan confirmed his decision, writing, “After 3 incredible years, I am leaving OpenAI at the end of next week.” He added that he had informed the company’s leadership team earlier this month.
Sharing a message addressed to his team, Narayanan described his time at OpenAI as “an incredible journey that felt more like ten years”. “Leading the b2b engineering team has been an enormous privilege. With the recent/upcoming product launches, this felt like the right time to step back,” he wrote. “I will also fondly remember my prior role leading the Applied Engineering team, from when it was ~40 people on a single floor in the 575 office, when I first started,” he added.
Narayanan also reflected on his earlier role at the company, where he led the Applied Engineering team during its early growth phase. “I will also fondly remember my prior role leading the Applied Engineering team, from when it was ~40 people on a single floor in the 575 office, when I first started. We shipped some of the fastest-growing products in history, like ChatGPT and the API, with no real playbook to guide us,” he said, crediting the team for its passion and dedication.
Narayanan thanked OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, president and co-founder Greg Brockman, and other leaders for what he called “an opportunity of a lifetime”. “I will cherish this time forever during this historic period for technology and society, and I wish you all the very best for the future,” he wrote.
Looking ahead, Narayanan said he plans to take a break and spend time with his family in India. “I am looking forward to spending some much-needed time with my aging parents in India before deciding what’s next,” he wrote.
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Who is Srinivas Narayanan?
According to his LinkedIn profile, Narayanan completed his B.Tech in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras, before pursuing a Master’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
He began his career in 1997 as a software engineer at IBM’s Almaden Research Center. He later worked as Director of Technology at Tavant Technologies and went on to co-found Viralizr in 2007, where he served as CTO.
In 2008, Narayanan joined Meta (then Facebook) as Vice President of Engineering, where he spent over a decade leading large-scale engineering teams and initiatives. He joined OpenAI in April 2023 as Vice President of Engineering and was later promoted to CTO of B2B Applications in September 2025.
