Vijaye Raji, an Indian-origin engineer from Puducherry, has been appointed as OpenAI’s first Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Applications, a newly created role focused on strengthening the company’s consumer-facing AI products.

This appointment comes alongside OpenAI’s $1.1 billion acquisition of Statsig, a product experimentation platform founded by Raji in 2021, in an all-stock deal. Raji will report to Fidji Simo, OpenAI’s CEO of Applications, and will oversee product engineering for ChatGPT and Codex, including critical infrastructure and integrity systems.

Raji brings more than 20 years of experience, having begun his career at Microsoft as a principal engineer on projects such as Windows Application Framework and Visual Studio Editor. He later joined Meta (formerly Facebook), rising to Vice President and Head of Entertainment, where he scaled the Seattle office to over 5,000 employees and managed key products including Marketplace and Messenger.

In 2021, he founded Statsig, a platform powering A/B testing and feature flagging, which has since been integral to OpenAI’s development processes.

Fidji Simo praised Raji’s record, stating, “Vijaye has a remarkable track record of building consumer and B2B products at scale,” highlighting his role in advancing OpenAI’s mission to create safe and intuitive AI tools.

Raji described the opportunity as “extraordinary” and emphasized his commitment to scaling AI solutions that tackle complex problems. The Statsig acquisition, pending regulatory approval, will integrate its employees into OpenAI while maintaining independent operations in Seattle, further strengthening the company’s applications division through strategic leadership and acquisitions.