OpenAI Engineer Prakash Sanker Says India Changed His Life

A career in Silicon Valley is often associated with high salaries, valuable startup stock options and the possibility of building extraordinary wealth. But OpenAI founding design engineer Prakash Sanker has offered a different perspective on professional success, explaining why moving from the United States to India became one of the most important decisions of his life.

In a LinkedIn post reflecting on his career and personal journey, Sanker said he left Silicon Valley at the age of 24 to build a business in India. The move took him away from a Technology ecosystem where some of his peers would later achieve significant financial success, but it also gave him experiences and relationships he says he would not trade for a different career outcome.

‘Regret can make you miserable about a life you actually love’

Sanker acknowledged that he sometimes compares his career with those of friends and former colleagues who remained in Silicon Valley and went on to achieve major financial success. Some of them joined promising startups at the right time, accumulated valuable stock options and eventually built considerable wealth.

Looking back, he said it is natural to imagine an alternative version of his life in which he made similar decisions. Had he stayed in the United States, he might have joined the right companies, benefited from their growth and earned significantly more money.

However, Sanker cautioned against treating that hypothetical outcome as a guaranteed reality. The assumption that every alternative decision would have produced a better result can make people dissatisfied with lives they otherwise value.

He described the emotional cost of these comparisons in his LinkedIn post, writing: “Regret can make you miserable about a life you actually love.”

He also admitted that seeing friends achieve extraordinary financial success can sometimes sting. But he believes focusing exclusively on the wealth he might have accumulated overlooks the personal circumstances that made leaving Silicon Valley necessary.

Why Sanker decided to leave Silicon Valley

According to Sanker, his decision to move to India was not simply a business or career experiment. He was going through a difficult period in his personal life and felt deeply dissatisfied with his circumstances.

“When I left Silicon Valley ten years ago, I really needed to leave. I was depressed and deeply unsatisfied with my life,” he wrote.

His description of the move as something that “healed” him reflects his personal experience rather than a medical claim. He said the change of environment and the experiences that followed helped him rediscover happiness, purpose and a stronger connection with his identity.

For Sanker, the move created an opportunity to step away from the professional comparisons and expectations that had been weighing on him. Instead of measuring progress through job titles, startup valuations or potential earnings, he began building a life around relationships, exploration and new experiences.

His story also challenges the assumption that moving to the United States or remaining in a major technology hub is always the best route for ambitious professionals. Career opportunities matter, but they are only one part of a person’s overall quality of life.

India gave him a business, a wife and experiences across Asia

Sanker said his years in India brought several personal and professional changes. Among the most important was meeting the woman who would become his wife.

He also credited the period with helping him build meaningful friendships, travel across Asia and develop a better understanding of India and his own identity.

In his post, he described meeting his wife, connecting with great people, travelling and enjoying experiences that he might not have had if he had remained focused on his Silicon Valley career.

The move also gave him the opportunity to work on businesses and explore entrepreneurship in a different market. Rather than following a conventional technology career path, he spent several years building companies and learning from the challenges of starting and operating a business.

His experience illustrates how relocating can change more than someone’s professional circumstances. A new country can introduce different communities, relationships, business opportunities and ways of thinking about success.

For Sanker, these experiences became central to the person he is today. He acknowledged that the financial outcome might have been different had he stayed in the United States, but said the life he built in India was an essential part of his personal development.

From Bengaluru startups to OpenAI in San Francisco

Sanker’s professional journey includes experience in both Silicon Valley’s technology ecosystem and India’s startup environment. His LinkedIn profile identifies him with OpenAI, while his earlier career included work at technology companies such as Palantir, Splunk and Remind.

He moved to India in 2017 and spent more than four years in Bengaluru working on startups. During that period, he also served as chief technology officer at Zelp, a company that later became publicly listed on Indian stock exchanges, according to his professional background and earlier media interviews.

His entrepreneurial journey continued through businesses in areas including cybersecurity and artificial intelligence. In 2022, he co-founded p0, a cybersecurity startup that used large language models to help identify software problems and security vulnerabilities.

The company raised $6.5 million in seed funding in 2024, with investors including Lightspeed Venture Partners. The business focused on helping software teams detect problems in code before they affected production systems.

Sanker later worked on Launch, an AI-powered platform designed to let users create websites and web applications using natural-language prompts. The Bengaluru-based venture aimed to make software development more accessible to people without extensive coding experience.

These ventures reflect a career shaped by experimentation and changing business opportunities rather than a single, uninterrupted path through established technology companies.

After spending years building businesses in India, Sanker returned to the United States and joined OpenAI as a Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE). The role involves working closely with customers to understand their needs and help apply AI technology to practical business problems.

His professional transition demonstrates that moving away from Silicon Valley did not permanently close the door to working in the US technology industry. Instead, the years spent building companies in India became part of the experience he brought back to the American technology sector.

His story reflects a different definition of career success

Sanker’s post resonated with professionals who recognised the pressure of comparing their careers with those of friends, former colleagues and people who appear to have made more financially rewarding decisions.

In technology, these comparisons can become particularly intense. Employees who join successful startups early may receive stock options that eventually become extremely valuable. A single investment or career decision can sometimes lead to wealth that would be difficult to achieve through a conventional salary.

However, startup success is uncertain. Joining a promising company does not guarantee that it will grow, go public or generate life-changing returns for employees. Even people working in the same organisation can have very different financial outcomes depending on their roles, timing and equity arrangements.

That uncertainty is important when considering Sanker’s reflections. His friends’ success represents one possible outcome of staying in Silicon Valley, not a result he could have guaranteed by making the same decision.

His experience also highlights the less measurable benefits of changing countries. Building a business, developing friendships, travelling, finding a life partner and gaining a stronger sense of identity may not appear on a financial statement, but they can have a lasting influence on someone’s life.

For professionals considering a move abroad or a return to India, the story offers a reminder that career decisions involve trade-offs. A higher potential salary may come with different personal circumstances, while a move to another country may create opportunities that are difficult to predict in advance.

‘Value the life you have,’ OpenAI engineer tells professionals

Sanker concluded his reflection by warning against spending too much time imagining how life might have turned out under different circumstances.

He argued that repeatedly revisiting missed opportunities can turn regret into bitterness, particularly when people compare their everyday lives with the most successful outcomes of others.

“Dwelling on regret will only make you bitter,” he wrote.

Instead, he encouraged people to recognise the value of their present circumstances, relationships and experiences. His message was not that financial success is unimportant, but that it should not become the only measure of whether a life has been worthwhile.

He summed up that perspective by urging people to value the life they have, the people who share it with them and the experiences that helped bring them to where they are today.

For Sanker, moving from Silicon Valley to India may have meant missing out on some potential financial opportunities. But he believes the decision gave him something equally significant: a business journey, meaningful relationships, travel, a stronger sense of identity and the person he became along the way.

His story offers a broader lesson for professionals navigating ambition and uncertainty. The most financially rewarding path is not necessarily the one that leads to the most fulfilling life, and an alternative career that looks attractive in hindsight may never have delivered the same personal happiness.