Models & LabsUnited States
xAI's Michael Roberson joins OpenAI infrastructure team as commissioning program manager
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As well as other SpaceXAI staff and former Meta employees
View the articleData Center Dynamics
Models & LabsUnited States
As well as other SpaceXAI staff and former Meta employees
As well as other SpaceXAI staff and former Meta employees
The former lead commissioning engineer at xAI (now SpaceXAI) Michael Roberson has joined OpenAI's infrastructure division.
Michael Roberson spent a year at Elon Musk's data center business, where he said he was in charge of end-to-end infrastructure commissioning for Colossus, Macrohard, and Macroharder data centers. He left this April for a three-month stint at Fluidstack.
Roberson has also held roles at the Tennessee Valley Authority, Southern Nuclear, and SyncroFlo.
"I’ll be helping bring data centers from construction through testing and into operations, ensuring the critical systems are ready to support the next generation of AI," Roberson said on LinkedIn. "I'm excited to tackle the challenges ahead alongside an incredible team."
He joins alongside a number of SpaceXAI staff, including site lead Aakash Verma, data center infrastructure staffer Amin Golnabi, project manager Andrej Sulek, and construction project manager Johnathan Henley.
A number of Meta employees have also joined the generative AI giant, including Nikhil Kumar, who spent the past eight years as a mechanical engineer. "I will be helping design and build the data centers that support AI development," Kumar said on LinkedIn.
"What excites me about joining OpenAI is the chance to broaden my horizons, keep learning, and help solve some really challenging infrastructure problems. There’s a lot to figure out as AI puts new demands on how we design and build data centers, and I’m looking forward to contributing alongside my new teammates."
Similarly joining from Meta is Naeem Dogar, previously the data center deployment strategy lead at the social media giant.
Offshore drilling contractor Valaris has also seen a number of staffers leave for OpenAI, including Marcio Santin and Kishen Maharaj. Brian Brown, who joined OpenAI in August, worked at Valaris until 2022, before moving to mechanical engineering company Ammann Group.
Also joining this past month is Bryan Carroll, previously of the Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County, but a Valaris employee until 2020.
"After an incredible run at Houston METRO, I’m excited to share that I’ve joined the Infrastructure Delivery team at OpenAI to help build the physical infrastructure that will power the future of AI," Carroll said.
"It’s an incredible opportunity to help scale the compute infrastructure needed to advance AI and ultimately enable AGI that benefits all of humanity!"