OpenAI appoints Instacart CEO to lead apps as Altman shifts focus to research, safety

May 8, 2025 | admin | Stock

OpenAI has appointed Instacart CEO Fidji Simo to head its Applications division, a key leadership shift as the company ramps up its focus on artificial general intelligence (AGI).

CEO Sam Altman, who will remain in his current role, announced that he is stepping away from day-to-day product responsibilities to concentrate on research, infrastructure, and safety.

Sam Altman

@sama

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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.

10:24 am · 8 May 2025

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The transition reflects OpenAI’s broader organisational restructuring and growing ambition to steer the global development of superintelligence responsibly.

The move also comes at a critical time as OpenAI navigates mounting regulatory and legal scrutiny, particularly around Altman’s separate project, World—a biometric identity system that uses iris scans in exchange for cryptocurrency tokens.

While OpenAI sharpens its product roadmap and executive structure, its involvement in high-risk, high-reward technologies is drawing intensified global attention.

Simo’s appointment adds a veteran consumer tech voice to the leadership table just as OpenAI enters a new stage of growth and oversight.

Simo takes over the core apps

Simo will lead OpenAI’s Applications group, which includes ChatGPT and other front-facing products, and will also manage scaling traditional corporate functions.

While she will continue serving as Instacart’s CEO during the transition, she plans to move to the Chair position of its board.

The move consolidates OpenAI’s product vision under a tech executive with extensive consumer platform experience.

At Meta (then Facebook), Simo led the development of high-traffic features like News Feed, Stories, Marketplace, and Facebook Live.

Her decade-long experience in scaling digital products for billions of users is expected to support OpenAI’s strategy of making AI tools more accessible and commercially viable while maintaining responsible deployment.

World faces data rulings

The leadership overhaul coincides with mounting legal pressure on World, a separate project co-founded by Altman and Alex Blania.

The biometric crypto platform scans users’ irises in exchange for WLD tokens, raising concerns over data privacy and consent.

On 29 April, Kenya’s High Court ordered the deletion of all biometric data collected by World, citing a lack of valid user consent and questioning the use of tokens as incentives.

Indonesia also suspended World’s operations for violating electronic system rules and using another entity’s credentials.

Despite regulatory resistance, World has recently launched in six major US cities, including San Francisco, Austin, and Miami.

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