Simo is expected to leave Instacart in the coming months to take up her new role reporting directly to Sam Altman.
Fidji Simo, the CEO of Instacart and a former high-ranking executive at Meta, has joined OpenAI as its CEO of applications.
As part of her new role, Simo will be enabling the AI start-up to scale and grow further, CEO Sam Altman said in a blog yesterday (7 May). She will be working under Altman, who will continue to directly oversee all of OpenAI’s arms.
This comes just days after OpenAI altered its restructuring plans which would have given a newly created corporation power over the non-profit which controls the $300bn start-up.
Earlier this year, the company raised $40bn, however, $10bn of the raise from SoftBank hinges on its ability to complete the for-profit restructuring.
In an X post, Altman explained that the new hire will allow him to sharpen his focus on research, compute and safety as the start-up aims to approach AI “superintelligence”.
Simo, who joined OpenAI’s board last year, is “uniquely qualified” to lead applications at the start-up, Altman said. She is expected to leave Instacart in the coming months to take on her new role later this year.
She will, however, stay on as chair Instacart’s board.
Commenting on her upcoming role, Simo said: “This organisation has the potential of accelerating human potential at a pace never seen before and I am deeply committed to shaping these applications toward the public good.”
While in an email to Instacart employees, Simo shared her passion for AI and its potential to cure diseases. “The ability to lead such an important part of our collective future was a hard opportunity to pass up.”
The Instacart chair and CEO is a Shopify board member. She previously held several positions at Meta (then Facebook), including head of the Facebook app, VP of video, games and monetisation, and director of product management.
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Fidji Simo on the Pullman Stage in 2014. Image: Official Leweb photos via Flickr (CC BY 2.0)