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Who is Vijaye Raji? Indian-origin founder sells startup to OpenAI for $1.1 billion
Vijaye Raji is the Indian-origin, Seattle-based founder of Statsig, which has been acquired by OpenAI in a $1.1 billion deal.
OpenAI has acquired product testing startup Statsig for nearly $1.1 billion in an all-stocks deal. As part of the deal, Vijaye Raji, founder and CEO of Statsig, will join OpenAI as the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Applications.
In a statement, OpenAI said that Raji will bring his decade-long expertise of leading large-scale consumer engineering at Meta and entrepreneurial vision to OpenAI. In his new role as CTO of Applications, the Indian-origin entrepreneur will report to Fidji Simo, CEO of Applications at OpenAI.
“I’m super excited to join OpenAI as CTO of Applications, reporting to Fidji Simo,” Vijaye Raji said in a post shared on X. “Once the acquisition is finalized, Statsig employees will become OpenAI employees. The company will continue operating independently and serving our customers,” he clarified.
Who is Vijaye Raji?
Vijaye Raji is the Indian-origin, Seattle-based founder of Statsig, which OpenAI has described as “one of the most trusted experimentation platforms in the industry”.
Raji launched Statsig four-and-a-half years ago, after a career spanning two decades spent at Microsoft and Meta.
According to his LinkedIn profile, he graduated from Pondicherry University with a Bachelor of Engineering degree in 1999.
After graduation, Raji started working for Microsoft, a company where he spent nearly 10 years. During his time at Microsoft in Washington, Raji worked on products like Windows Application Framework, SQL Server Modeling Language/Runtime, Visual Studio Editor, and others, according to the Statsig blog.
After leaving Microsoft in 2011, Raji joined Facebook. He spent a decade climbing the corporate ladder, going from Software Engineer to VP, Head of Gaming, Head of Facebook Seattle, and ultimately VP and Head of Entertainment.
Vijaye Raji on OpenAI acquisition
“Joining OpenAI as CTO of Applications is an extraordinary opportunity to bring my experience scaling consumer and enterprise products to a mission I deeply believe in: advancing AI in ways that are capable of solving hard problems, reliable, and truly beneficial to people everywhere. The journey with Statsig has been deeply gratifying, leading me to this moment and giving me conviction that we will continue helping teams ship better software every day,” said Raji.
