Fidji Simo
Businesswoman and former CEO of InstacartWikipedia
26
MENTIONS
19
EPISODES
17
PODCASTS
Search complete. 26 mentions across 19 episodes found for "Fidji Simo".
Sep 1, 2026
Sam AltmanGUEST
And I should have been holding everybody to, this is the one thing we'll not worry about these sort of side quests more.
Alex HeathHOST
Looking at the leadership changes you had, about a year ago, you brought in Fiji Simo to help run large parts of the company.
Alex HeathHOST
She had to step back due to her health, and now you and Greg Brockman, your co-founder, are effectively splitting responsibilities, running the company together.
Alex HeathHOST
Is this the setup that you envision will continue, or is this something temporary?
Sam AltmanGUEST
I think it's going super well.
Sam AltmanGUEST
We will continue to bring in and promote new leaders, but it feels, and I'm extremely sad about Fiji, hard to fill her shoes, but it feels good and I think Greg and I are executing well and the company is, you can really tell when things are moving in the right direction and it feels like things are moving in the right direction.
Alex HeathHOST
How do you all make decisions, you and Greg together? Like who decides what? Do you ever have a tie you have to break?
Sam AltmanGUEST
I mean, we talk a lot, like a lot, like all of the time.
Nilay PatelHOST
[upbeat music] We're back with The Verge's Hayden Field discussing the major org chart changes at OpenAI.
Nilay PatelHOST
I wanna talk about Fidji Simo for, for one more second here.
Nilay PatelHOST
She was the former CEO of Instacart, but before that, she was a really high-ranking executive at Meta.
Nilay PatelHOST
She ran the Facebook app.
Nilay PatelHOST
When she came to OpenAI, it felt like her role was to turn the consumer version of ChatGPT into a product.
Nilay PatelHOST
And there were lots and lots of people leaving Meta to go to OpenAI for a while, such that basically we had reporting that every all hands at Meta was about, "What are you gonna do about OpenAI?" Like, they're taking all of our people.
Nilay PatelHOST
You just saw this exodus of people from Meta going to OpenAI in various ways, led by Fidji Simo, in a moment where it felt like what they wanted to do was take on Google as a big consumer product supported by ads.
Nilay PatelHOST
It's funny, Altman actually copped to that ambition on the David Senra show last week.
Luke VargasHOST
In addition to stumbles at Stargate, OpenAI has since shifted towards signing deals with cloud providers rather than developing facilities itself.
Luke VargasHOST
In recent weeks, OpenAI's chief revenue officer, chief operating officer, and Sam Altman's second in command, Fidji Simo, have all left the company.
Luke VargasHOST
We've talked here before about Tesla's humanoid robot ambitions, which Elon Musk has told investors could print infinite revenue for the company, while Chinese EV maker Xpeng is making its own humanoid bet, with co-founder Brian Gu predicting that the margins of its robotics unit will one day eclipse its core vehicles business.
Brian GuSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
The hardware is already much higher than the automotive business.
Luke VargasHOST
In addition to stumbles at Stargate, OpenAI has since shifted towards signing deals with cloud providers rather than developing facilities itself.
Luke VargasHOST
In recent weeks, the company's chief revenue officer, chief operating officer, and Sam Altman's second in command, Fidji Simo, have all left the company.
Luke VargasHOST
Asian stocks have ended the day mixed.
Luke VargasHOST
European stocks are mainly higher in midday trading, and Nasdaq futures have ticked lower ahead of earnings from Nvidia, Salesforce, CrowdStrike, and HP after the closing bell.
Colin HarperHOST
And there are a number of others as well under commercial leadership that have left.
Colin HarperHOST
Some of them have left for just pursuing other roles like Fidji Simo.
Colin HarperHOST
He was the CEO of Applications and Altman's top deputy.
Colin HarperHOST
He left his full-time role as stolen advisor.
Andrew Ross SorkinHOST
Malone joined OpenAI in March of last year, and in recent weeks, the company's now seen its chief revenue and chief operating officer leave.
Andrew Ross SorkinHOST
Top executive, uh, Fiji Simo also, of course, departed the company for health reasons, uh, earlier in the year, maybe I should say late last year.
Andrew Ross SorkinHOST
Uh, so questions about, um, some of the re- executive ranks.
Andrew Ross SorkinHOST
We talked to Greg Brockman, the CEO, um, co-founder, I should say, of OpenAI, and asked him about all this, and he really argued that what's happening at OpenAI right now in terms of, uh, some of these management changes we're seeing is for a different era, uh, of the company, especially as they start to think about, uh, moving into, uh, becoming a publicly traded company.
Kate RooneyCORRESPONDENT
And then you had longtime executive Brad Lightcap also announcing his, his exit this month.
Kate RooneyCORRESPONDENT
Fiji Simo dep- stepped down for health reasons.
Kate RooneyCORRESPONDENT
This was last month.
Kate RooneyCORRESPONDENT
Four other executives total have left since April.
Kate RooneyCORRESPONDENT
He was an early employee and, uh, from what I'm hearing from sources, was seen as somebody that was very good at scaling the company, but maybe not the person to lead it in the next chapter.
Kate RooneyCORRESPONDENT
There's examples where Fiji Simo, for example, had health issues.
Kate RooneyCORRESPONDENT
So there, there are different circumstances for every executive, but it does paint this picture of a company pre IPO that has a lot of turnover, a lot of volatility in the executive ranks, and it did catch a lot of investors that I'm talking to off guard.
Kate RooneyCORRESPONDENT
And so this is another example of it in a very foundational important side of the business at a time when they gotta get as much compute as possible.
Alex KantrowitzHOST
"Last week, the company replaced its chief revenue officer, Denise Dresser, after she spent less than a year on the job.
Alex KantrowitzHOST
Her departure followed a string of other exits, including former, uh, chief operating officer, Brad Lightcap, and Fiji Simo, once seen as the heir apparent to Chief Executive Sam Altman." So, uh, it is a lot of, uh, departures.
Alex KantrowitzHOST
Fiji, of course, health-related reasons, but Brad Lightcap, uh, is a big one.
Alex KantrowitzHOST
Um- Look, I think this is just the consequences of them, you know, really getting their butt kicked by Anthropic on the way to coding.
Alex KantrowitzHOST
And they've taken a few months, uh, to sort of turn their ship and focus it on Codex, uh, which is still in the process of, of being released.
Ranjan RoyHOST
...
Ranjan RoyHOST
the, the, this, the, by golly, three senior executives leaving.
Ranjan RoyHOST
Also, not just senior executives, each the one that is supposed to be, like, especially Fiji and then Denise.
Michael FurtickGUEST
That was actually not the warning shot that struck or landed with me.
Michael FurtickGUEST
The warning shot that struck and landed with me was when Fiji Simo, who was kind of the inside CEO from the outside business reports, decided to take a medical leave.
Michael FurtickGUEST
Okay, that seems for medical reasons, but also decided not to come back.
Michael FurtickGUEST
The headline was that she was not coming back for medical reasons.
David FaberHOST
Yes, exactly.
Oliver RenickCORRESPONDENT
Let me
David FaberHOST
come back to Fiji Simo for a second.
David FaberHOST
You said that sort of that's writing on the wall or she I'm just curious as to what about her or what you know about her that leads you to believe that's an important moment.
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