Meet Vijaye Raji: The Indian tech genius OpenAI just hired as CTO after $1.1 Billion buyout

In today's era of startups and tech giants, billion-dollar deals often hit like a jackpot - not just in business, but also through the way they influence technology shaping the future.

And recently, a story of a visionary, Indian-origin entrepreneur has come to the limelight whose work quietly changed the game.His story of persistence, innovation, and global talent is making waves in the heart of Silicon Valley, where he had initially started his journey in India, and went on to work with tech giants like Microsoft and Facebook.

Indian-origin founder joins OpenAI after $1.1 billion startup deal

OpenAI has officially acquired product testing startup Statsig in a deal worth nearly $1.1 billion.

The acquisition was made through an all-stock transaction. As part of the deal, Vijaye Raji, the founder and CEO of Statsig, will now join OpenAI as the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Applications, where he will report to Fidji Simo, CEO of Applications at OpenAI.Sharing his excitement on X, Raji said, “I’m super excited to join OpenAI as CTO of Applications, reporting to Fidji Simo. Once the acquisition is finalized, Statsig employees will become OpenAI employees.

The company will continue operating independently and serving our customers.”In a statement on their official website, OpenAI highlighted Raji’s experience in scaling large-scale consumer engineering systems during his time at Meta (Facebook), and praised his “entrepreneurial vision” as a key asset for their next phase of growth.

Who is Vijaye Raji

Born and educated in India, Raji earned his Bachelor of Engineering from Pondicherry University in 1999.

He then spent nearly a decade at Microsoft, working on major tools like Visual Studio Editor, Windows Application Framework, and SQL Server technologies.In 2011, he joined Facebook, where he spent the next 10 years climbing the leadership ladder, ultimately becoming VP and Head of Gaming, Entertainment, and Facebook Seattle.Raji launched Statsig just four and a half years ago. The platform has since grown into what OpenAI called it as “one of the most trusted experimentation platforms in the industry.”Reflecting on the journey, Raji said in the statement of OpenAI’s website blogpost, “Joining OpenAI as CTO of Applications is an extraordinary opportunity... 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.”