Latest news with #openai
Indian Express
4 days ago
- Business
- Indian Express
As UAE, OpenAI sign deal, will ChatGPT Plus really become free for its citizens?
OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, is partnering with the United Arab Emirates to build one of the world's most powerful artificial intelligence computing complexes, marking a bold step in the company's new 'OpenAI for Countries' initiative. The new project, called Stargate UAE, will be developed in partnership with American tech giants and local Emirati firms, and will serve as a key node in OpenAI's growing global infrastructure. The announcement follows a high-profile diplomatic push led by US President Donald Trump during his visit to the Gulf nation last week. During the visit, Trump and UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed jointly unveiled plans for a sprawling five-gigawatt data centre in Abu Dhabi — with Stargate UAE slated to serve as the first one-gigawatt phase of that larger vision. OpenAI and its partners are all set to build a one gigawatt AI computing centre in Abu Dhabi, with about 200 megawatts to open by 2026. This will be the first of several data centers planned for the complex next year. great to work with the UAE on our first international stargate! appreciate the governments working together to make this happen. sheikh tahnoon has been a great supporter of openai, a true believer in AGI, and a dear personal friend. — Sam Altman (@sama) May 23, 2025 This one gigawatt centre will be part of the larger 5 gigawatt Abu Dhabi data center announced by President Trump and UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed during the former's visit last week. An Axios report states that the new UAE investment via G42 could be about $20 billion, with the expected outlays in the Gulf at $8 billion and the US at $10 billion. The US government has also given its approval to the deal. OpenAI last week announced its Artificial Intelligence (AI) partnership with UAE, which will make it the first country to enable ChatGPT across the country, meaning the AI will be integrated into sectors like education, healthcare, energy and government services. OpenAI's official announcement mentions nationwide access to ChatGPT, but it nowhere mentions that it will be free of cost for personal subscription. While some media reports mentioned that it will be freely available to all UAE residents, there is no confirmation regarding the same by OpenAI or UAE government. As of now, the ChatGPT's free version (GPT 3.5) remains available for everyone in the UAE, and the premium version, ChatGPT Plus is available at a cost of $20 per month.
Indian Express
12-05-2025
- Business
- Indian Express
Meet Fidji Simo, Instacart's turnaround specialist now incharge of ChatGPT at OpenAI
OpenAI has hired Instacart's CEO Fidji Simo to run its customer-facing products including ChatGPT, DALL-E, and GPT Store. Simo will be stepping into the new full-time role as CEO of Applications at OpenAI later this year. Applications is one of the three operational divisions at the Microsoft-backed startup, besides Research and Compute. All three verticals will continue to be overseen by Sam Altman, who said that he would remain in his position as CEO of the company. Simo will report directly to Altman while OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap, CFO Sarah Friar, and CPO Kevin Weil will report to her, according to a report by Bloomberg. The 39-year-old executive will be transitioning out of her role as head of the online grocery delivery platform over the next few months. '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,' Simo was quoted as saying by TechCrunch. In a post on X, she also clarified that she will continue to serve as chair of the Instacart board. Simo's move to OpenAI was announced just days after the ChatGPT maker revealed it is scrapping its controversial plan to become a for-profit company. As part of OpenAI's latest governance plan, the non-profit board will retain control over the public benefit corporation and become a major shareholder in it. '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,' Altman wrote in a blog post, adding that Simo has already contributed a great deal to the company since joining OpenAI's board last year. She also sits on the board of Shopify. so excited that @fidjissimo is joining openai in a new role: ceo of applications, reporting to me. i'll remain ceo of openai, but in this new configuration i'll be able to increase my focus on research, compute, and safety. these are critical as we approach superintelligence. — Sam Altman (@sama) May 8, 2025 So, what is Simo's background and career history? Will it help her turn OpenAI's consumer products into key revenue drivers? What is likely to be on her agenda as the head of applications? Take a look. Simo is originally from Sète, a small port city in the south of France. She grew up in a family of fishermen and was the first to graduate from high school, according to a report by Fortune. When she was 20 years old, she interned as a lobbyist for the fishing industry, as per a 2019 report by Marie Claire. Simo has a master of management degree from the HEC Paris business school. She spent four years working as a strategy manager at e-commerce company eBay. In 2011, Simo joined Facebook to run the company's advertising programme and launch ads on News Feed. A few years later, she became Facebook's director of product development and spearheaded the company's mobile-ad products. In 2019, Simo was chosen to be the head of the Facebook app, during which time she supervised the News Feed as well as Marketplace, Ads, Groups, Video, Stories, and more. She helped monetise the Facebook app and build the tech giant's advertising business during her stint at Meta (formerly Facebook). After joining Instacart's board in February 2021, Simo was tapped to be the CEO of the company a few months later. When she took over the reins as CEO, Instacart was facing intense competition from the likes of Amazon, Walmart and DoorDash. Its pandemic hyper-growth had stalled and valuations were collapsing. But Simo successfully steered the company back to growth amid the COVID-19 pandemic. She is credited with transforming the delivery service into a retail tech giant with a profitable advertising business. Under Simo's leadership, Instacart's self-serve advertising platform evolved from a basic ad offering to a retail media network that generated nearly $1 billion in annual revenue in 2024. She oversaw the launches of Carrot Ads and Carrot Insights as part of a broader retail media strategy that reportedly led to the platform being used by over 220 retailer banners and more than 7,000 CPG brands. In January last year, Instacart started showing customers personalised ads on its AI-powered smart shopping carts in physical stores. In 2023, Instacart became a publicly traded company with its IPO set at $30. It raised over $660 million at a valuation of $10 billion. Simo is considered to be the architect of Instacart's financial turnaround as she implemented various measures including freezing headcount, renegotiating cloud contracts, etc. As for Instacart's AI strategy, Simo announced the launch of Smart Shop in March this year. Smart Shop is designed to offer a personalised shopping experience for customers by leveraging advanced machine learning to understand their shopping habits and identify patterns in their dietary preferences. 'I think with AI, we're going to have way more ability to connect a lot more data, to mine that data to find better insights, and then to use those insights to tell people how to change their behavior,' Simo said in a 2024 interview with Fortune. Envisioning the use of AI in healthcare, Simo said at a conference, 'The beauty of AI is in the past, these data sets were very siloed, and even if you wanted to analyse a ton of genomics data, that was a huge endeavor that could take many months, let alone if you wanted to do it across all the data points I mentioned. But now, because we have these tools that allow us to analyse giant data sets, we're going to be able to understand patterns we couldn't understand before.' In 2023, Simo founded the Metrodora Institute after being diagnosed with postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), which is a disorder that reportedly affects the nervous system. Several doctors and neurologists had previously misdiagnosed her as a 'tired mom'. Metrodora partners with patients to enroll them in research and gather various data points on them such as their genetics, immune profiling, reported symptoms, environment, etc. Conversational shopping assistants and advertising tools are expected to be the next phase of AI development. Based on her past experience in retail media and advertising, Simo is uniquely positioned to build and expand OpenAI's offerings in this regard. Last month, ChatGPT's search functionality was 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. Aside from retail and advertising, Simo also brings monetisation expertise to the table as OpenAI looks to balance hyper-growth with rising compute costs.
The Hindu
08-05-2025
- Business
- The Hindu
Instacart CEO Fidji Simo to join OpenAI in new leadership role
Instacart CEO Fidji Simo is joining OpenAI as the company's chief of applications, the ChatGPT maker said on Thursday. Altman will remain the CEO of OpenAI and will continue to directly oversee all pillars of OpenAI, including compute and applications, the firm said. Simo will transition from her role at Instacart over the next few months and join OpenAI later this year. '[S]o excited that @fidjissimo is joining openai in a new role: ceo of applications, reporting to me. i'll remain ceo of openai, but in this new configuration i'll be able to increase my focus on research, compute, and safety. these are critical as we approach superintelligence,' posted Altman on X on Thursday (May 8, 2025). Instacart said that the company's new CEO will be announced soon and that Simo will also remain Chair of the Instacart Board to support the new CEO. The Information first reported the development and said that OpenAI was in talks with a senior tech executive to oversee some of the company's divisions.
Business Insider
08-05-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
Sam Altman just hired a CEO of Applications to help him grow his AI empire
Instacart chair and CEO Fidji Simo will join OpenAI as its new CEO of Applications, the ChatGPT maker's CEO, Sam Altman, said on Thursday. "I'll remain CEO of OpenAI, but in this new configuration I'll be able to increase my focus on research, compute, and safety," Altman wrote in an X post announcing Simo's hiring on Thursday morning. Altman announced Simo's hiring in a message to employees earlier on Wednesday. OpenAI published Altman's message as a blog post on the same day. "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," Altman wrote in his message to employees. Altman said in his message that Simo "has already contributed a great deal to our company" since joining OpenAI's board in March 2024. He added that Simo will start work at OpenAI later this year and "will transition from her role at Instacart over the next few months." In her new role, Simo will report directly to Altman. "Fidji is exceptional; we have worked together on OpenAI for the past year and I have observed her deep commitment to our mission," Altman wrote on X on Thursday. "I cannot imagine a better new team member to help us scale the next 10x (or 100x, let's see)," Altman added. When approached for comment, a spokesperson for OpenAI referred Business Insider to its blog post. so excited that @fidjissimo is joining openai in a new role: ceo of applications, reporting to me. i'll remain ceo of openai, but in this new configuration i'll be able to increase my focus on research, compute, and safety. these are critical as we approach superintelligence. — Sam Altman (@sama) May 8, 2025 Simo started her career at eBay before moving to Meta, where she oversaw Facebook's app and advertising products. She joined Instacart as a board member in January 2021 and became its CEO in August 2021. On Thursday, Simo wrote in an X post that she will continue to be Instacart's CEO for the next few months, and will still be the chair of its board after she joins OpenAI proper. So excited to be joining @openai and contributing to its mission. Thank you @sama for the opportunity- it will be such a privilege to work with such a talented team on one of the most important and ambitious endeavors in history. I'll remain CEO of @Instacart for the next few… — Fidji Simo (@fidjissimo) May 8, 2025 "I'm so grateful to my Instacart team for the amazing ride we had together, and I look forward to supporting the next CEO during the transition," Simo added. Simo did not immediately respond to a request for comment from BI.
