Meet Fiji Simo, the last rental of Openai

Fiji Simo The career in technology has already taken him from Facebook to Instacart. Now she is ready to join OPENAI as a new CEO of applications.

On Wednesday, Openai announced that he had hired the president and CEO of Instacart to join his C-Suite. The CEO of Openai, Sam Altman, wrote in a blog article that Simo is “only qualified” for the role and reports to him directly.

Altman said that Simo “has already contributed a lot to our company” since it joined the Board of Directors of Openai in March 2024. It should join the Openai management team later this year after having started its “transition from its role at Instacart in the coming months”.

The hiring of Simo, 39, who spent a large part of his career in Meta, was interpreted by certain people in the technology industry that Optai seriously concerns the construction of a social network. The penis reported last month that Optai was at the early stages of Build a type X product.

“It seems that they want to go after Facebook, after each manner -considering mobile application that succeeds because they can and because it has the history to do so,” Julien Codorniou, 20VC partner who worked alongside Simo on Facebook, told Business Insider Codorniou. “It is a very large signal for competition, for the market and for users.”

Simo did not respond to a request for BI comments. OPENAI referred to BI to the publication of Altman's blog on Simo's hiring.

'The crew comes in front of you, always'

The story of Simo began in Sère, the French fishing city where it grew up.

“My family, all the men of my family, whether it be my father, my grandfather, my great-grandfather, and all my uncles were fishermen and one of them, my uncle became a fish merchant, after you know, stopping fishing,” said Simo Bloomberg in an interview broadcast in November.

Simo began his business career at Ebay as a strategy manager in 2007, after graduating from HEC Paris, one of the best French business schools.

The French-Americans joined Meta, then known as Facebook in 2011.

The climb of Simo on Facebook was dazzling. Even his job request was remarkable. She asked for a marketing communication role – an area in which she had no previous experience, but she was determined to give her a chance.

In an interview in 2021 on the podcast “The Twenty Minute VC”, she recalled how she spent a Thanksgiving weekend entirely inventing a new product called “Facebook Stores”, and recorded a webinar and produces marketing equipment to promote it. The presentation helped her obtain the role of Facebook, but Simo said that the job director laughs while laughing that she would never have been considered only on her previous experience. (Facebook then launched a very similar initiative, called shops.)

Simo then went from marketing to the product – another role in which she had no prior experience – and worked on some of the most influential product launches on Facebook. She was responsible for monetizing the mobile shortly after her IPO 2012, at a time when there were concerns about whether the company could make a successful mobile company. She directed video product launches like Facebook Live and Facebook Watch and finally increased to direct the Facebook application.

“I think that a large part of my career has taken off approximately moments when I made betting that other people did not think they were obvious bets,” said Simo on the interview with Podcast “VC of twenty minutes”.

Simo has become popular among colleagues and business partners. Dominique Delport, who sat the Facebook customer council for eight years when he was general manager of the French Giant Giant Havas Group, told Bi that “opening” was a large part of the Simo leadership philosophy.

“Big Tech sometimes has an image of arrogance – and Facebook has gone through certain phases – and I think it was among those who helped change the perception of the advertising community,” said Delport.

Simo joined the Board of Directors of Instacart in January 2021 and became its CEO in August 2021.

Simo declared in his interview with Bloomberg that his childhood which grew up in a fishing village had influenced his career choices.

“I think it was incredibly special because there is a job and respect that fishermen have. It is interesting, in Silicon Valley, the people who are most respected are like technicians, while here, the most respected people are the people who feed the city,” said Simo.

“So, in a way, becoming CEO of Instacart is sort of filling these two things for me, where I like technology, but I have always had the passion of nourishing people, and it is therefore a really special thing to be able to fill the two,” added Simo.

In a profile published by Sequoia in February 2024, Simo said that his leadership style was shaped by his father and grandfather, who were both captains of boats.

“The crew comes from you, still,” said Simo about their leadership philosophy.

Simo is also a passionate artist. Sculptor and painter, she previously served on the boards of the Cirque du Soleil and La Dance Project.

“You must always put creativity at the center of everything you do,” she said on the “twenty-minute podcast VC”.

Leave instacart

Simo's release occurs the same week that Instacart reported its best quarterly growth in orders in more than two years. It also provides positive growth for the second quarter, cutting the trend of a dark retail sector.

Rachel Wolff, analyst at Emarketer, a BI sister company, said that optimistic income showed “how much the company has succeeded as a necessity for many households”.

In a letter to Instacart employees on Wednesday evening, Simo said it was an “incredibly difficult decision” to leave the business.

Simo said that his decision was partly motivated by his passion for AI and his “potential to heal diseases”, which made Openai a difficult opportunity to pass. Simo is currently president of the Metrodora Institute, a for-lucrative health clinic that focuses on the treatment of complex neuro-immune diseases.

While it will remain CEO of Instacart while the company is looking for a successor, Simo is preparing its next chapter. Simo previously said that his favorite book was “The Night Circus”, a fantastic novel on two magicians preparing to take itself in a deadly duel. Now working for Sam Altman, Simo should fight with his former mentor, Mark Zuckerberg, while Openai offers to dominate the world of applications.

“For this work, it is absolutely perfect,” said Codorniou. “She has something very special – she is one in a billion.”