OpenAI has hired Meta's head of AI compute and storage supply chain as part of its infrastructure strategy and leadership team.

Keith Heyde joined the generative artificial intelligence startup in November, but the move has not been previously reported.

Data center in space OpenAI Dalle.png
– DCD/DALL·E 2

At Meta, Heyde served as the single-threaded owner for supply chain coordination (compute/network/and infrastructure) of Meta's first 100,000 GPU cluster.

He also led three teams managing Meta's AI compute and storage manufacturing & integration supplier portfolio for racks and servers. This included ODM/Supply Chain management, configuration engineering, and business enablement.

Meta's total capital expenditure hit around $38-40 billion last year, as it ramped up spending on AI data centers.

Prior to Heyde's nearly four year stint at Meta, he worked at Alphabet's drone delivery business Wing.

At OpenAI, Heyde will be involved with 'The Stargate Project,' a new company announced this week that is set to invest as much as $500bn into AI data centers.

Funded by SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, and Abu Dhabi's MGX, OpenAI will have operational responsibility over the new venture.

The buildout is currently underway, starting in Texas - likely Oracle's project in Abilene, which is itself leased from Crusoe.

"We are thrilled to be publicly kicking off a truly awesome Infrastructure buildout," Heyde said on LinkedIn. "Thank you to all of our partners, suppliers, and teammates as we continue along this journey."