Fidji Simo, the CEO of Instacart, has been hired by OpenAI to manage its customer-facing products, such as ChatGPT, DALL-E, and GPT Store. She will assume her new full-time position at the AI startup as the CEO of Applications later in 2025.
Sam Altman, who earlier stated that he would continue to serve as the company’s CEO, will continue to supervise all three verticals. According to a Bloomberg report, Simo will report directly to Altman, while Brad Lightcap, Sarah Friar, and Kevin Weil, the chief operating officer (COO), chief financial officer (CFO), and chief product officer (CPO) of OpenAI, will report to her.
“Joining OpenAI at this critical moment is an incredible privilege and responsibility. This organisation has the potential to accelerate human potential at a pace never seen before and I am deeply committed to shaping these applications toward the public good,” Simo said, while also clarifying that she will continue to serve as chair of the Instacart board.
Fidji Simo’s move to OpenAI was announced just days after the ChatGPT maker revealed it was scrapping its controversial plan to become a for-profit company. As part of OpenAI’s latest governance plan, the nonprofit parent will retain control over the public benefit corporation and become a major shareholder in it.
“Applications bring together a group of existing business and operational teams responsible for how our research reaches and benefits the world, and Fidji is uniquely qualified to lead this group,” Sam Altman wrote in a blog post, adding that Simo has already contributed a great deal to the company since joining OpenAI’s board in 2024. She also sits on the board of Shopify.
Early Life And Career Of Fidji Simo
French-American businesswoman Fidji Simo was born in Sète, France, on October 5, 1985. She is well-known for her significant leadership in the technology sector. She was the first person in her family to graduate from high school and went on to obtain a Master’s degree from HEC Paris after finishing her last year at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management. She was raised in a fishing family. Her remarkable career trajectory has been shaped by the strong work ethic and collaborative leadership style that her modest upbringing instilled.
Fidji Simo joined Facebook in 2011 after starting her career at eBay, where she worked on local commerce projects. Overseeing essential features like News Feed, Stories, Marketplace, and Facebook Live, she advanced to become the head of Facebook’s flagship app. Scaling Facebook’s mobile advertising business was made possible in large part by her leadership. In 2021, she was named CEO of Instacart, where she chaired the board and led the business through a successful initial public offering in 2023. She joined OpenAI in May 2025 as CEO of Applications, managing operations, finance, and products while freeing up CEO Sam Altman to concentrate on strategy and research.
When Simo took over the reins as CEO, Instacart was facing intense competition from the likes of Amazon, Walmart, and DoorDash. However, she successfully steered the company back to growth amid the COVID-19 pandemic. She was the key brain behind the company transforming itself from a delivery service provider to a retail tech giant with a profitable advertising business as well. Under Simo’s leadership, Instacart’s self-serve advertising platform also generated nearly USD 1 billion in annual revenue in 2024.
Fidji Simo also oversaw the launches of Carrot Ads and Carrot Insights as part of a broader retail media strategy that reportedly led to Instacart being used by over 220 retailer banners and more than 7,000 Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) brands, according to a report by Forbes. In January 2024, Instacart started showing customers personalised ads on its AI-powered smart shopping carts in physical stores.
As Instacart became a publicly traded company in 2023 with its IPO, it raised over USD 660 million at a valuation of USD 10 billion. Simo staged Instacart’s financial turnaround as she implemented measures like freezing headcount and renegotiating cloud contracts. As for Instacart’s AI strategy, Simo announced the launch of Smart Shop in March 2025. Smart Shop will now offer a personalised shopping experience for customers by leveraging AI and machine learning to understand their shopping habits and identify patterns in their dietary preferences.
In addition to her business positions, Fidji Simo is involved in advocacy and healthcare. She is the president of the Metrodora Institute’s foundation and a co-founder of the research and treatment facility for complicated neuroimmune diseases. The non-profit organisation Women in Product, which supports women in tech leadership, was also co-founded by her. Simo has been honoured for her leadership by Fortune, Fast Company, and Vanity Fair. She is a member of the boards of OpenAI and Shopify. Along with her spouse, Remy Miralles, and their daughter, she resides in San Francisco.
A Timely Appointment
Conversational shopping assistants and advertising tools are expected to be the next phase of AI development. Based on Simo’s past experience in retail media and advertising, she appears to be the perfect choice to build and expand OpenAI’s offerings in this space.
ChatGPT’s search functionality recently got upgraded to provide an improved and personalised online shopping experience for users. Now, users who look for products online using the Search feature in ChatGPT will see images of products as well as details such as pricing and reviews. The AI-generated search results will also include direct links to websites where they can buy those products. Fidji Simo is expected to further enhance this particular search functionality. She also brings monetisation expertise to the table as OpenAI looks to balance its hyper-growth with rising compute costs.
The ChatGPT maker will also restructure itself in a format that will allow its non-profit entity to retain ultimate control, a plan that has received the blessing of Japanese giant SoftBank, one of the AI startup’s biggest backers. The endorsement of SoftBank became crucial as the Japanese firm’s $30 billion investment in OpenAI was contingent on a change in structure. In March 2025, OpenAI closed a $40 billion funding round, receiving $30 billion from SoftBank. OpenAI needs to conclude the restructuring process by December 31, failing which SoftBank’s portion of the financing will be reduced to USD 20 billion.
Instead of fully turning into a for-profit entity, OpenAI’s non-profit arm will retain control of the company, while the limited liability company, which handles all of the business operations, will turn into a public benefit corporation. That means this division will have the ability to generate profit, but will also focus on social good.
Image Credits: Instacart