The Product Podcast

OpenAI CTO of Application on Product Experimentation with AI and $1.1B Statsig Acquisition | Vijaye Raji | E273


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In this episode, Carlos Gonzalez de Villaumbrosia interviews Vijaye Raji, Co-founder and CEO of Statsig, the fast-growing product experimentation platform recently valued at $1.1 billion following a $100M Series C round—and just acquired by OpenAI in a landmark $1.1B all-equity deal.

Before the acquisition, Vijaye spent over a decade at Facebook, where he served as VP and Head of Entertainment, launching creator tools, livestreaming features, and the earliest version of Reels. That experience inspired him to build Statsig, a platform that empowers product teams to experiment, iterate, and ship with confidence—used by leading companies like Microsoft and Notion.

Now, as OpenAI’s Chief Technology Officer of Applications, Vijaye will oversee product engineering for ChatGPT and help accelerate the company’s enterprise roadmap. In this conversation, he shares the original vision behind Statsig, the tough lessons from going multi-product, and why AI-native experimentation is the future of product building.

What you’ll learn:
- Vijaye’s journey from Facebook’s internal tools to OpenAI’s CTO of Applications.
- How Statsig evolved from an experimentation engine into a full decision-making stack.
- Why large enterprises are ditching homegrown tools for best-in-class platforms.
- How AI is powering everything from feature flagging to self-healing products.

Key Takeaways 👇
- From Startup to OpenAI: Why StatSig’s platform and customer base made it one of OpenAI’s largest acquisitions yet.
- AI as an Operating Layer: How Vijaye is thinking about AI-native observability, prompt evaluation, and synthetic user data.
- Scaling with Product-Led Growth: Lessons in going enterprise while keeping experimentation at the core.


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Credits:
Host: Carlos Gonzalez de Villaumbrosia
Guest: Vijaye Raji

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