THE YEAR IN BIG SHOES: FIDJI SIMO TAKES THE REINS

SAM ALTMAN HAS LONG BEEN THE FACE OF OPENAI. SO WHO'S THE NEW CEO HE PUT IN CHARGE OF ALL HIS PRODUCTS?

- BY ZOË SCHIFFER

IN CASE OPENAI's structure couldn't get any weirder-a nonprofit in charge of a for-profit that's become a public benefit corporation-it now has two CEOs. There's Sam Altman, chief executive of the whole company, who manages research and compute. And as of this summer, there's Fidji Simo, the former CEO of Instacart, who manages everything else.

Simo hasn’t been seen much at OpenAI’s San Francisco office since she began as CEO of Applications in August. But her presence is felt at every level of the company—not least because she’s heading up ChatGPT and basically every function that might make OpenAI money. Simo is dealing with a relapse of postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS) that makes her prone to fainting if she stands for long periods of time. So for now, she’s working from home in Los Angeles, and she’s on Slack. A lot.

“Being present from 8 am to midnight every day, responding within five minutes, people feel like I’m there and that they can reach me immediately, that I jump on the phone within five minutes,” she tells me. Employees confirm that this is true. OpenAI’s famously Slack-driven culture can be overwhelming for new hires. But not, apparently, for Simo. Employees say she is often seen popping into channels and threads, sharing thoughts and asking questions.

Simo joined during a chaotic period for OpenAI, which is expanding in nearly every direction. There are sovereign AI partnerships, new model releases, retail partnerships, multibillion-dollar compute deals, a proprietary chip, a mysterious hardware product—and of course, ChatGPT. “We do not battle for scope,” Simo says. “We battle for less scope.”