OpenAI Expands Leadership with Fidji Simo

_Sam shared this message with the company earlier today:_

Hi everyone - I have some exciting news to share. I was hoping to do this in a few weeks but a leak accelerated our timeline.

We started OpenAI as a research lab with a mission to ensure artificial general intelligence (AGI) benefits everyone.

Over the past two and a half years, we have started doing two additional big things. First, we have become a global product company serving hundreds of millions of users worldwide and growing very quickly. More recently, we’ve also become an infrastructure company, building the systems that help us advance our research and deliver AI tools at unprecedented scale. And as discussed earlier this week, we will also operate one of the largest non-profits.

Each of these is a massive effort that could be its own large company. We’re in a privileged position to be scaling at a pace that lets us do them all simultaneously, and bringing on exceptional leaders is a key part of doing that well.

To strengthen our execution, I’m excited to announce Fidji Simo is joining as our CEO of Applications, reporting directly to me. I remain the CEO of OpenAI and will continue to directly oversee success across all pillars of OpenAI – Research, Compute, and Applications – ensuring we stay aligned and integrated across all areas. I will work closely with our board on making sure our non-profit has maximum positive impact.

Applications brings 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. Serving as an OpenAI board member over the past year, Fidji has already contributed a great deal to our company. She will transition from her role at Instacart over the next few months and join OpenAI later this year.

In her new role, Fidji will focus on enabling our “traditional” company functions to scale as we enter a next phase of growth. I’m passionate about many of these areas and I will stay closely involved with key company decisions. Fidji brings a rare blend of leadership, product and operational expertise, and genuine commitment to ensuring our technology benefits everyone.

In addition to supporting Fidji and our Applications teams, I will increase my focus on Research, Compute, and Safety Systems, which will continue to report directly to me. Ensuring we build superintelligence safely and with the infrastructure necessary to support our ambitious goals. We remain one OpenAI.

Fidji shared the following:

Fidji’s leadership makes me even more optimistic about our future as we continue advancing toward becoming the superintelligence company we aim to be.

– Sam