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AI Lately
Live · The Signal · W37
Monday, September 14, 2026
AI Lately

AI is about people, and what they have been up to lately.

Lately
Fidji SimoNscaleas Independent Director· Sep 11Josh EngelsMETRas Researcher· Sep 10Joe BentonMETRas Researcher· Sep 10Alan DuongCrux AIas Chief Development Officer· Sep 10Paul ChristianoOpenAI Foundationas Board Member, Safety and Security Committee· Sep 9Jacob CoxonIndependentas Independent AI Safety Advocate· Sep 8Geoffrey IrvingMathematical AI Safety Instituteas Scientific Advisory Panel Member· Sep 8Paul ChristianoMathematical AI Safety Instituteas Scientific Advisory Panel Member· Sep 8Fidji SimoNscaleas Independent Director· Sep 11Josh EngelsMETRas Researcher· Sep 10Joe BentonMETRas Researcher· Sep 10Alan DuongCrux AIas Chief Development Officer· Sep 10Paul ChristianoOpenAI Foundationas Board Member, Safety and Security Committee· Sep 9Jacob CoxonIndependentas Independent AI Safety Advocate· Sep 8Geoffrey IrvingMathematical AI Safety Instituteas Scientific Advisory Panel Member· Sep 8Paul ChristianoMathematical AI Safety Instituteas Scientific Advisory Panel Member· Sep 8

Person

Fidji Simo

Lately: Nscale as Independent Director, from OpenAI.

Public record only: name, role, employer, source, and date.

Recorded moves

  1. Fidji Simo → Nscale as Independent Director, from OpenAI (CEO, AGI Deployment)

    Simo carries OpenAI product credibility onto Nscale's board as the infrastructure firm heads toward a US IPO, pairing raw compute ambition with a deployment leader fluent in shipping consumer-facing AI.

    boardconfirmedPR Newswire: Fidji Simo Joins Nscale Board of DirectorsSep 11, 2026

  2. Fidji Simo → ChronicleBio as Co-Founder, from OpenAI (CEO of Applications)

    Simo trades OpenAI's applications helm for a biotech venture built from her own medical journey.

    foundingconfirmedFortune: Fidji Simo on Her Life After OpenAI and New Startup, ChronicleBioAug 10, 2026

  3. Fidji Simo → ChronicleBio as Founder, from OpenAI (CEO of Applications)

    Removed the executive most directly responsible for turning OpenAI's research into consumer revenue, timed awkwardly against IPO preparation.

    departureconfirmedTechCrunch: Fidji Simo Steps Down From OpenAI's No. 2 RoleJul 9, 2026

  4. Fidji Simo → OpenAI as CEO of Applications, from Instacart (Chief Executive Officer)

    OpenAI's clearest signal that commercializing ChatGPT required an operator's discipline, not another researcher.

    hireconfirmedCNBC: OpenAI hires Instacart CEO Fidji Simo as head of applications, reporting to AltmanMay 7, 2025

In the archive

  • Opinion

    People Are the Product

    Four hires — Alexandr Wang at Meta, Varun Mohan at Google, Fidji Simo at OpenAI, Krishna Rao at Anthropic — explain company strategy better than any earnings call, and that is AI Lately's method.

  • Hiring & Talent

    The Biggest AI Hires of 2025

    Meta's $14.3 billion Scale AI deal, OpenAI's C-suite rebuild, and Google's Windsurf license turned 2024 and 2025 into a two-year auction for AI's rarest asset: the researchers themselves.

  • Hiring & Talent

    The Biggest AI Hires of 2026 (So Far)

    Fidji Simo relinquished her post as OpenAI's second-in-command to illness, Noam Shazeer and three Google veterans departed together to found a rival, and John Ternus rose to Apple's helm, rewriting AI's leadership map in 2026.

  • Hiring & Talent

    OpenAI's Org Chart in Motion

    Fidji Simo's July 2026 exit, Kevin Weil's departure from OpenAI for Science, and Noam Shazeer's arrival from Google trace a company shedding experiments to concentrate on enterprise AI and frontier research.

  • Agent Infrastructure

    Machines With Money: Agent Payments Arrive

    Mastercard, Visa, Stripe, Google, and Coinbase built five competing rails for agent payments inside fifteen months, and their overlapping partner rosters reveal a single converging standard taking shape.

  • Consumer AI

    Consumer AI at Scale

    ChatGPT crossed 900 million weekly users and started running ads while Apple ceded Siri's rebuild to a rival's model, showing three different theories of who owns the AI relationship once assistants graduate from answering into deciding.