Earlier this month, an Indian-origin techie went infamously viral on social media for his style of drinking water. Vineeth Sendilraj ended up becoming the focus of a photo snapped at an xAI hackathon. Although the camera click pictured a room full of “hardcore builders and engineers” at the event linked to Elon Musk‘s company, Sendilraj entirely stole the scene upon being judge by countless others on social media.
The teen techie in question has now landed a job at world’s very leading artificial intelligence company. Here’s what happened.
Indian-origin Vineeth Sendilraj joins Elon Musk’s xAI
Taking to his official account on X, the Indian-origin individual shared the unexpected turn on events with his followers and the world at large. “1 week ago I got clipped for drinking water,” he wrote in his tweet on Wednesday (US time). “Now I’m joining @xai to build the future of AI.”
He described the unprecedented development as a “full circle moment,” while also sharing the same snap that made him the talk of techie-driven social media algorithm.
In a follow-up message, he extended “special thanks” to fellow Indian-origin Umesh Khanna, who also started at xAI recently, and two other people, Chris Park and Tony Wang, who were presumably there with him at the xAI hackathon a week ago.
Why Vineeth Sendilraj went viral on X
Sendilraj’s professional update followed in reference to a picture shared by user @taycaldwell on X, who also happens to be professionally associated with Elon Musk’s AI firm. On December 6 (US time), she shared the aforementioned snap capturing a scene from the xAI hackathon.
“A full audience of hardcore builders and engineers at the @xai hackathon!” she wrote alongside the image.
People eventually caught sight of Sendilraj in the corner of that photo, as he was seen drinking water in bizarre fashion. Some even commented under the post, plugging a zoomed-in screenshot of the Indian-origin techie.
With Sendilraj’s self-deprecatory professional update alluding to the same week-old photo, someone ultimately joked that he should recreate the photo on his first day at xA. Another person called it the “best twitter arc.”
More about the Indian-origin techie
According to his LinkedIn profile, Sendilraj’s team won first place at the said xAI hackathon and got invited on a fully-paid trip to the next SpaceX launch. “Here’s what we built: Vector: an agentic platform that engages your X community in your product development cycle. Devpost: https://lnkd.in/eaBdKgad,” he said in a post shared on the professional platform a week ago.
Vineeth added, “Thanks to Vardhan Agnihotri and Yuvraj Lakhotia for building with me and special thanks to the xAI Team for hosting us!”
His professional experience listings on the website indicate that he also serves as a teaching assistant at the College of Computing at Georgie Tech. In the past, he stepped up as a software engineer intern at Amazon, machine learning engineer at Harvard John A Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and even a research assistant at Georgia Institute of Technology.
He is pursuing his Bachelor of Science in Computer Science: System Architecture & AI at Georgia Institute of Technology and studied at Lambert High School. While his LinkedIn says he is currently based in Atlanta Metropolitan Area, his X bio determines he’s 19 years old.
You can find more about him on his website http://www.vineethsendilraj.com, which shares following description: “Hi, I’m Vineeth! I’m a student at Georgia Tech studying Computer Engineering and Artificial Intelligence. I’m interested in high-performance computing, machine learning, & distributed systems.”
Sendilraj has thousands of followers across social media platforms Instagram and TikTok, where he currently goes by the username @vinnysauce.