Person
Fidji Simo
Lately: Nscale as Independent Director, from OpenAI.
Recorded moves, newest first
Fidji Simo joins Nscale board as independent director
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.
Fidji Simo to ChronicleBio as Co-Founder
Simo trades OpenAI's applications helm for a biotech venture built from her own medical journey.
Fidji Simo to ChronicleBio as Founder
Removed the executive most directly responsible for turning OpenAI's research into consumer revenue, timed awkwardly against IPO preparation.
Fidji Simo to OpenAI as CEO of Applications
OpenAI's clearest signal that commercializing ChatGPT required an operator's discipline, not another researcher.
In the archive
Opinion
People Are the Product
Four hires explain AI strategy better than any earnings call: Alexandr Wang to Meta, Varun Mohan to Google, Fidji Simo to OpenAI, Krishna Rao to Anthropic. Reading them 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 gave up her post as OpenAI's second-in-command to illness, Jeff Dean left Google with three senior colleagues to found a rival, and John Ternus took over at Apple, redrawing AI's leadership 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.
Consumer AI
ChatGPT Advertisers See Organic Traffic Rise and Fall With Their Ads
Marketers report a lift in ChatGPT's 'organic' referrals that fades the day ads stop, while OpenAI's Sam Altman and Fidji Simo insist paid placements stay separate from the model's answers.
Hiring & Talent
OpenAI Loses 14 Senior Leaders in 2026
Brad Lightcap, Denise Dresser and Joshua Achiam lead 14 executives who left OpenAI since March, and some cite the company's mission and its Pentagon deal.