OpenAI and Anthropic are two of the companies at the centre of the global AI race, and both have Indian-origin chief technology officers. But despite their leadership roles at two of the world’s most prominent AI labs, neither CTO is a graduate of an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT).
OpenAI is divided into three main divisions — Research, Scaling and Infrastructure, and Applications. Key teams like data, experimentation, and growth fall under Raji’s domain. (Also read: Who is Vijaye Raji? It is one of the world’s fastest growing tech startups, best known for its flagship AI assistant, Claude.
Vijaye Raji is the CTO of Applications at OpenAI , one of the world’s most valuable AI companies that shot to sudden fame with the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022. Indian-origin founder sells startup to OpenAI for $1.1 billion ) Vijaye Raji then founded Statsig. The startup was acquired by OpenAI in a $1.1 billion deal in 2025. Rahul Patil was named Anthropic’s chief technical officer in October 2025. Anthropic is an American AI company founded in 2021 by former OpenAI researchers.
Applications takes the technology developed by the other two and “then brings it to the people”, says Vijaye Raji.
Because iIT alumni have played an important role in the technology industry, this fact is noteworthy. History is evidence to this. Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, studied at IIT Kharagpur, while Arvind Krishna, CEO of IBM, is an IIT alumnus. So is Vinod Khosla of Khosla Ventures and Nikesh Arora of Palo Alto Networks. Closer home, the CEOs of major companies like TCS, Infosys and ITC have all studied at IITs. But the rise of tech leaders like Anthropic CTO Rahul Patil and OpenAI CTO of Applications Vijaye Raji speaks to the fact that an IIT degree is not a prerequisite for success.
