Just now, OpenAI appointed a new Indian-origin CTO, acquired a company for $1.1 billion, and took over the core of the ChatGPT product.

OpenAI made another big splash today.

It invested $1.1 billion to acquire a new company, Statsig. Not only did it buy the company, but it also "acquired" its people.

Vijaye Raji, the CEO of Statsig, directly joined OpenAI and became the new CTO of its applications department.

He will report directly to CEO Fidji Simo. (It is estimated that Altman is focusing on computing power and renovating his super - computing center.)

Many people may not have heard of Statsig. It is an experiment and analysis platform that helps software teams launch new features "more smartly, safely, and quickly", such as the commonly - mentioned A/B testing, feature toggles, and product analysis.

It doesn't help OpenAI write code, but helps determine "whether to launch the code after it's written, how to launch it, and whether it brings good results after launch."

From the official website demo of Statsig, it can be seen that it provides a variety of tools to support data analysis and experimental design.

Users can obtain real - time data on core indicators such as daily active users (DAU) and purchase events (DPE) through the platform. At the same time, they can use dashboards and alert functions to monitor project progress and team collaboration.

Vijaye Raji Joins OpenAI as CTO of Applications

Vijaye Raji, the newly - joined CTO, seems to be a "programming powerhouse", and his resume is also extremely impressive.

Here is his Github profile. Judging from the green - box contribution graph, he really loves programming and writes code almost non - stop throughout the year.

Vijaye Raji worked at Microsoft for about ten years and then led large - scale consumer engineering at Facebook (Meta) for a decade.

In 2021, he left Meta to found Statsig, aiming to enable external product teams to use experimental and data tools at the same level as those used internally at Meta.

The mission of Statsig is to reduce the cost of product trial - and - error, allowing engineers and product teams to iterate faster in a data - driven manner.

He is also actively involved in the community, supporting education and public welfare, such as volunteering to teach computer science courses to children.

OpenAI officially announced that Vijaye Raji will be responsible for leading the product engineering of ChatGPT and Codex. His responsibilities will span core systems and product lines, including the infrastructure and Integrity teams.

An Indian Genius Who Fell in Love with Programming at 12

Vijaye was born in Puducherry, India. At 12 years old, he developed a strong interest in programming.

Since his family couldn't afford a computer, he learned programming on the computers at the local library.

Once, in order to write code all night, he even convinced the librarian to lock him in the library after closing time.

Despite his passion for technology, Raji always couldn't bear to be far away from his family.

Therefore, when it came to choosing a university, he didn't choose the top information technology institutions that have produced many Indian - American engineers in Silicon Valley. Instead, he enrolled in Pondicherry University nearby.

Shortly after graduation, he was selected by Wipro, an Indian outsourcing giant, and sent to Finland to work for Nokia.

Two years later, Vijaye received an offer from Microsoft in Seattle.

At that time, Wipro offered him an annual salary of $2,600, which was a good deal in India at that time.

Microsoft promised an annual salary of $72,000 in the offer letter! Such a high salary made him think that there must be a printing error in the company's offer.

After joining Microsoft, Vijaye spent nearly a decade creating many outstanding products, including the Windows Application Framework, SQL Server Modeling Language/Runtime, and Visual Studio Editor.

Later, Vijaye went to Meta and led the creation of projects such as Windows Messenger, Facebook Marketplace, and Groups Commerce.

He started as a software engineer and was promoted step by step, serving as vice - president, head of the gaming business, head of the Seattle office, and finally becoming the vice - president and general head of the entertainment business.

However, there is one thing that Vijaye never wants to admit, which is how much he is loved by his current and former team members.

Vijaye will never mention on his own that he is a capable and reliable partner in the eyes of leaders and employees.

He will avoid talking about the giant human - shaped pillows with his image that circulated in the old Meta office in Seattle.

If you ask him, he will probably just shrug and laugh it off, then share an anecdote about "influence comes from trust".

In his free time, he likes to accompany his family and volunteer to teach computer science at primary schools.

As for outdoor activities, he tries to avoid them as much as possible.

Why Did OpenAI Acquire Statsig?

Considering Altman's "resignation" as OpenAI's CEO and the transfer of power to Vijaye Raji, OpenAI's next step is to focus on product development.

According to foreign media reports, these series of actions clearly indicate that OpenAI's strategic focus is shifting significantly from pure underlying model research and development to building world - class, data - driven end - user products.

Compared with Anthropic, which aspect does OpenAI need to improve the most now?

Meanwhile, Anthropic announced a new round of financing today, and its valuation soared.

In this Series F financing round, it raised $1.3 billion, and its post - investment valuation is about $183 billion. Anthropic has a larger "long - term budget", and its external narrative also emphasizes reliability, security, and enterprise readiness (including strong coding capabilities).

In such a comparison, what OpenAI most needs to strengthen is not "one more large - scale model", but to stably and continuously transform research results into a reusable product engineering system: conduct faster experiments, launch more stably, and quantify "whether it is really better" more clearly.

OpenAI's acquisition of Statsig is to complete and strengthen the product engineering middle - platform for the last mile of "model capabilities → user value".

Making experiments, gray - scale releases, real - time indicators, and causal evaluations "default actions" allows applications such as ChatGPT and Codex to go from ideas to large - scale launches faster and more controllably.

And this is exactly the area where Statsig excels.

Statsig's platform: A/B testing, feature flags, and real - time decision - making have already been adopted by teams such as OpenAI. In other words, OpenAI has directly incorporated a "product experiment middle - platform" into the foundation of its application line.

OpenAI for Science

Meanwhile, Kevin Weil, the CPO of OpenAI, launched a new project within the company - OpenAI for Science.

The goal is to create the next - generation great scientific instrument: a platform driven by AI to accelerate scientific discovery.

This small team will consist of top scholars, all of whom:

Have reached the world - class level in their fields;

Deeply believe in the power of AI;

Are outstanding science communicators.

At the same time, they will be paired with a group of researchers, hoping to prove that AI models are ready to accelerate the progress of basic science and promote research processes around the world.

Scientific discovery can improve all aspects of our lives, from the quality of daily life to national security and global GDP. Few fields can bring as much hope as science in improving human life.

GPT - 5 is obviously a new milestone.

Here are four recent examples, and there are more. Not to mention outstanding achievements such as AlphaFold developed by Google DeepMind.

1. GPT - 5 Pro improved a bound in a convex optimization paper by Sebastien Bubeck by 50% in just 17 minutes of thinking.

2. GPT - 5 outlined the proof idea for a recent hep - th paper on quantum field theory and proposed relevant expansion directions.

Paper link: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2508.21276v1

3. In OpenAI's recent cooperation with Retro Biosciences, a customized model designed a significantly improved variant of a Nobel - prize - level protein (related to stem cells).

4. Derya Unutmaz continuously provided examples of AI accelerating his biological research.

Kevin Weil said that he went to graduate school to become a high - energy physics researcher, but like many others, he was attracted by interesting technical problems and plunged into the startup circle.

Now, as an AI researcher, he will start working with Sebastien Bubeck and OpenAI's synthetic data team to learn this skill.

He can engage in this because OpenAI has excellent product and design leaders, and with Fidji Simo becoming the application CEO, the team is even more powerful.

In the next few months, he will share more information about OpenAI for Science.

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