The $1.1 Billion Rise of Vijaye Raji

From a Small Campus in India to the Front Seat of AI's Future

The $1.1 Billion Rise of Vijaye Raji

Great success stories don't always begin in Silicon Valley. Sometimes, they start on a quiet college campus in India.

Meet Vijaye Raji, an alumnus of Pondicherry University, who didn't come from privilege, funding networks, or elite Ivy League circles.

He came with something else: Curiosity. Persistence. And the hunger to build.

The Journey Begins

After college, Vijaye moved to the U.S. and spent over a decade building products at:

• Microsoft

• Facebook

• Robinhood

Previously working at Facebook, he led engineering teams developing internal tools utilized by thousands of employees.

That experience planted a powerful idea:

“Companies move faster when they test, learn, and iterate — not guess.”

An idea that would soon change his life.

The Startup That Changed Everything

In 2020, Vijaye started Statsig in Seattle.

• No hype.

• No flashy marketing.

• Just a clear mission:

Make it crazily easy for any company to experiment with measuring and improving their products, much like big tech would.

• Statsig allows teams to

• Ship features to small % of users

• Run experiments instantly

• Measure real impact in minutes

• And scale only what worked

• Fast. Data-driven. Controlled innovation.

The market loved it.

Microsoft, Notion, Figma, and hundreds more adopted it.

The $1.1 Billion Moment

The world was obsessed with AI by 2025. Every company wanted to build faster. Each product needed to learn faster.

OpenAI noticed this.

Statsig became the engine powering fast product development, including AI-powered applications. And OpenAI acquired Statsig in a surprise $1.1 billion deal in 2025.

Overnight, Vijaye Raji had gone from startup founder to a key player in shaping how the world uses AI.

Today, he is:

CTO of Applications at OpenAI

He is not just writing code anymore

He is helping define the future of AI experiences used by billions. The tribunal felt this was outside of their purview. The Lesson? You don’t need to be born in Silicon Valley. You don't need a famous surname. You don't need perfect timing. You just need clarity of problem, courage to build, and patience to scale. Vijaye Raji didn't chase the hype. He built tools that make innovation faster. And the world came to him.