Volkswacht Bodensee - From fishing family to Big Tech: French CEO takes on Silicon Valley

Reporting directly to CEO Sam Altman, the move to the ChatGPT-maker represents the latest chapter in a career that has taken Simo from a fishing family in France's Mediterranean port of Sete to the heights of Silicon Valley.

As the current CEO of grocery delivery platform Instacart, she cuts a unique profile: a French woman in the male-dominated American tech landscape -- who resists advice to blend in.

"I can put all my energy trying to be someone else or I can be myself and pour all of that energy into what I can create," she told CNBC in February.

This philosophy will likely be on display when she appears Thursday at the VivaTech conference in Paris.

Raised in Sete, Simo attended the elite HEC business school before joining eBay in 2006, first in France then in California.

"People expect a very business-like story for why I decided to come to the US. It wasn't. The American Dream was on TV every night and that was an incredibly appealing thing," she said.

- 'Never Intimidated' -

In 2011, Simo joined Facebook, now Meta. She was given responsibility for video and monetization in 2014, a role she considers the defining moment of her career.

Simo championed the company's pivot to video, which became central to Meta's strategy despite initial internal skepticism.

"She never let herself be intimidated," recalled David Marcus, who worked at Meta alongside Simo and now serves as CEO of online payment company Lightspark.

"She had an ability to challenge Mark (Zuckerberg) and push him, when others would have hesitated."

Joining Instacart in 2021, Simo inherited a company that had been bleeding money for a decade.

Under her leadership, the grocery delivery platform achieved profitability in 2022 through aggressive diversification: data monetization, expanded retail partnerships and a robust advertising business.

Now Simo faces her biggest test yet. As OpenAI's number two, she'll free up CEO Altman to focus on research and infrastructure while she tackles the company's operational challenges.

Despite being one of history's most highly funded startups and ChatGPT's phenomenal success, OpenAI is burning cash at an alarming rate.

The company has also weathered significant leadership turnover, including Altman's own brief ouster and reinstatement in 2023, raising questions about management stability.

But French investor Julien Codorniou, who worked alongside Simo at Facebook, said she will more than rise to the occasion.

"Fidji's arrival is a declaration of ambition by OpenAI," he said.

T.Zimmermann--VB