In case of OpenAI The structure couldn’t be more bizarre – a nonprofit in charge of a for-profit entity that has become a public benefit corporation – it now has two CEOs. The chief executive of the entire company is Sam Altman, who manages research and calculations. And this summer, it’s former Instacart CEO Fidzi Simo, who manages everything else.
Simo hasn’t been seen much in OpenAI’s San Francisco office since taking over as CEO of the application in August. But her presence is felt at every level of the company – and not just because she’s leading ChatGPT and basically everything that can make money from OpenAI. Simo has been battling recurrences of postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), which puts her at risk of fainting when standing for long periods of time. So right now, she’s working from home in Los Angeles, and she’s on Slack. Very.
“Being present every day from 8 a.m. to midnight, responding within five minutes, people feel like I’m there and they can reach me immediately, I’m on the phone within five minutes,” she tells me. The staff confirms this is true. OpenAI’s famous Slack-driven culture can be overwhelming for new hires. But, apparently, not for Simo. Employees say they are often seen visiting channels and threads, sharing ideas and asking questions.
Simo joins during a chaotic period for OpenAI, which is expanding in almost every direction. There’s sovereign AI partnerships, new model releases, retail partnerships, multibillion-dollar compute deals, a proprietary chip, a mysterious hardware product—and of course, ChatGPIT. “We don’t fight for scope,” says Simo. “We fight for less scope.”
Outside Silicon Valley, Simo’s appointment came as a surprise. For those who know, it was no less than a shock. A native of Sète, a small fishing town in the south of France, Simo made a name for herself running the Facebook app at Meta before taking the top job at Instacart in 2021. He took the grocery startup public two years later. In the Valley, she is known as a product visionary with a reputation for enhancing consumer apps around the world.
Simo’s role at OpenAI is, largely, to do just that – turn the company’s research breakthroughs into money-making, consumer-facing products. It faces stiff competition from tech giants like Google and Meta, as well as AI startups founded by OpenAI alumni, including Thinking Machines Lab, Anthropic, and Periodic Labs. “What keeps me up at night is that the intelligence of our models goes far beyond how much people are using them,” says Simo. “I see my work as bridging this gap.”
Since his arrival, Simo has overseen the launch of Pulse, a product that connects to users’ calendars and gives them personalized information based on their schedules, chat history, and feedback; Created a job platform to allow people to become AI-certified and seek roles that utilize their skills; and doubled the improvement in ChatGPT’s responses to people with severe mental health crisis. Ultimately, sources say, she will be the one who decides how to introduce advertising into ChatGPIT’s free tier.