From French fishing roots to OpenAI: What we know about Fidji Simo

Euronews

10-05-2025

OpenAI announced a new hire on Thursday, a woman from the south of France who has leapt the C-suites of Silicon Valley and was once a Sheryl Sandberg mentee.
Fidji Simo, a 39-year-old tour de force, will report directly to Sam Altman as CEO of applications, and according to Altman, will help OpenAI in scaling 'traditional' company functions.
Here is everything we know about the rising tech star and her new role.
Simo grew up in Sète, a port city in southern France. She comes from a family of fishermen and has often talked about the importance of food in interviews.
She said she is the first person in her family to go to university, which was thanks to a scholarship.
She studied at HEC in Paris from 2004-2008, and through the programme, was able to do an internship at eBay in the United States.
She said it was there she 'fell in love with technology'. She said she then convinced eBay to give her a job in the US.
After staying a couple of years at eBay, she then went on to join Facebook in the marketing department, which she said 'propelled her career'.
She often tells the story that she got her big break at Facebook during a Thanksgiving weekend. Rather than take holiday, she decided to work on concepts for Facebook by imagining a shopping experience. She then pitched this to a hiring manager, asking for a job.
After eight years at Facebook, in which former chief operating officer (COO) Sheryl Sandberg was one of her mentors, in 2019, she climbed the ranks to an executive position as head of the Facebook app.
One year after the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and following Sandberg's departure from Facebook, Simo also left and took a position that went back to her roots.
Simo became the CEO of the online grocery delivery company Instacart in 2021.
She helped turn the company's fortunes around, and she forged partnerships with Uber for restaurant delivery through Instacart via Uber Eats, giving both companies a competitive edge over rival DoorDash.
On Friday, Simo, in an open letter to Instacart employees, said that it was 'an incredibly hard decision' to leave 'because I love this company', adding that the staff was 'top notch'.
But she said: 'At the same time, you all know my passion for AI generally and in particular for the potential it has to cure diseases - the ability to lead such an important part of our collective future was a hard opportunity to pass up'.
Simo has often spoken about health in the workplace and opened up about her own case of endometriosis.
Simo was already on the board of OpenAI. She will transition out of Instacart over the next few months and take up her new position full-time later this year.
Her new role in Applications will bring together 'a group of existing business and operational teams responsible for how our research reaches and benefits the world,' Altman said in a blog post.
'Fidji is uniquely qualified to lead this group,' he added.
Altman said he would continue in his role, overseeing verticals like research, compute, and applications.
In the same blog post, Simo said: 'Joining OpenAI at this critical moment is an incredible privilege and responsibility'.
'This organisation has the potential of accelerating human potential at a pace never seen before, and I am deeply committed to shaping these applications toward the public good'.
With just under three months to go before the 27 EU member states need to appoint a regulator tasked with overseeing business' compliance with the AI Act, it remains unclear in at least half of the member states which authority will be nominated, a round-up by Euronews shows.
By 2 August member states must notify the Commission about which market surveillance authorities are appointed, in addition the countries need to adopt an implementing law that sets out penalties and that empowers their authorities.
The latest meeting of the AI Board in late March, which helps coordinate cooperation between member states, showed that the majority of the counties sent representatives from ministries. Just a handful - Denmark, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Romania - had national regulators attending.
The EU executive does not want to comment on which countries are ready yet, but an official working at the AI Office told Euronews that the process in those member states that recently went through elections, such as Germany, will likely be delayed.
The official said that the states are overall are having 'intense discussions' in the AI Board – which helps coordinate cooperation between member states – as there are different ways to set up the oversight structure.
Countries are free to decide how to do it, and whether to appoint just one or several regulators.
'I think 95% of them have certainly chosen the structure that they want to have, and started the process to appoint the authorities. We will see whether on 2 August things will be finalized or not. Sometimes it's difficult to tell because the process in the parliaments may be more or less on here,' the official said.
The AI Act – which aims to regulate AI tools according to the risk they pose to society – entered into force in August 2024, and started to apply gradually. It will be fully in force in 2027.
A delay in appointing the oversight bodies will mean uncertainty for businesses that have to start complying with the rules.
Some member states have set up an entirely new regulator, such as Spain, where AESIA, an independent agency of the Spanish Department of Digital Transformation, is likely to assume the role.
In Poland, a pending implementing act sets up a new body, the Committee on Development and Security of AI, as the market surveillance authority.
Denmark on the other hand designated its pre-existing Agency for Digital Government.
For Germany, it seems likely that the Federal Network Agency will take up the role.
Others, including the Netherlands, will likely expand the tasks of the privacy watchdog to also check compliance with the AI Act, which has the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) as its legal basis.
The privacy regulators themselves called upon member states in July to ensure that they take charge of high-risk systems such as Biometric identification, law enforcement as well as migration, asylum and border control management.