Fidji Simo, chief executive officer of Instacart Inc., speaks during a Bloomberg Studio 1.0 interview in San Francisco, California, U.S., on Thursday, March 3, 2022.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
OpenAI said late Wednesday that it’s tapped Instacart CEO Fidji Simo as the head of its applications business, reporting to CEO Sam Altman.
In a memo to employees that OpenAI published on its blog, Altman said that Simo, who joined the artificial intelligence startup’s board last year, is assuming the title of CEO of Applications.
“Applications brings together a group of existing business and operational teams responsible for how our research reaches and benefits the world,” Altman wrote. He said that Simo will “focus on enabling our ‘traditional’ company functions to scale as we enter a next phase of growth.”
The announcement comes two days after OpenAI said that its nonprofit would retain control of the company even as it restructures into a public benefit corporation, bowing to pressure from civic leaders and ex-employees. Founded as a research lab in 2015, OpenAI has been engulfed in a heated legal battle with Elon Musk, a co-founder who now runs AI rival xAI. Musk is trying to keep OpenAI from converting into a for-profit company as he competes in the generative AI market with his own startup, xAI.
Simo, who was one of CNBC’s Changemakers in 2024, took Instacart public a year earlier, helping to break the longest tech IPO drought in three decades. The company, which has an army of contractors delivering groceries to consumers, boomed during the Covid pandemic as Americans were sheltered in place.
“There were a lot of questions about whether Instacart would be just another pandemic fad,” Simo told CNBC. “And we have now proven that we not only kept the Covid gains, but grew on top of the Covid gains and grew sustainably and profitably, which is really important.”
Before Instacart, Simo made a name for herself as the head of Facebook at Meta, a role she held from 2019 until 2021. Earlier this week, Instacart announced Fizz, a new drink and snack delivery app for those 21 and older.
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