Indian-origin openAI CTO Srinivas Narayanan steps down
New Delhi: Indian-origin tech leader Srinivas Narayanan has announced that he will step down from his role as Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for B2B Applications at OpenAI, marking the end of a three-year tenure at the company.
In a post on X, Narayanan confirmed that he will be leaving next week, having informed the leadership team earlier this month. Reflecting on his journey, he described his time at OpenAI as “an incredible journey that felt more like ten years.”
Narayanan led key engineering teams during a period of rapid growth, including the development of widely adopted products such as ChatGPT and OpenAI’s API. “Leading the B2B engineering team has been an enormous privilege,” he wrote, adding that recent and upcoming product launches made it “the right time to step back.”
He also looked back on his earlier role leading the Applied Engineering team, recalling its early days as a small group that went on to build some of the fastest-growing products in tech. Narayanan credited the team’s passion and dedication for navigating uncharted territory without a defined playbook.
Expressing gratitude, he thanked OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and co-founder Greg Brockman, calling his stint at the company “an opportunity of a lifetime” during a transformative era for technology.
Looking ahead, Narayanan plans to take a break and return to India to spend time with his family. “I am looking forward to spending some much-needed time with my aging parents in India before deciding what’s next,” he said.
Who is Srinivas Narayanan?
Srinivas Narayanan is a seasoned technology leader with decades of experience in building and scaling engineering teams. He holds a B.Tech in Computer Science from Indian Institute of Technology Madras and a Master’s degree from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
He began his career at IBM’s Almaden Research Center and later held leadership roles at Tavant Technologies. In 2007, he co-founded Viralizr, serving as CTO.
Narayanan spent over a decade at Meta (then Facebook) as Vice President of Engineering, leading large-scale initiatives before joining OpenAI in 2023. He was promoted to CTO of B2B Applications in 2025.
