The power shift inside OpenAI

Fiji Simo Rolls up her first week in Openai, where she should supervise most of the company’s around 3,000 employees.

For investors and partners, OPENAI leaders have described the former CEO of Instacart as the type of stable hand that the company needs. His mandate is clear: transform a chaotic and unprofitable startup into a disciplined technological giant and coded on the stock market. On paper, it seems well adapted. She experienced the Hyper -Growth era of Facebook in the early 2010s, helped make instacart public and knows the advertising industry inside and outside – an experience that will be precious once the announcements arrive at Chatgpt.

Simo’s arrival also highlights a greater change inside Openai. It becomes more and more clear than the CEO Sam Altman does not want the responsibilities to manage the next major technological company. It seems more concentrated on the collection of billions of dollars for massive calculation projects and the incubation of a brain interface startup than the management of daily operations. During the dinner, I attended with him last week, he illuminated while describing a “new type of financial instrument” to shape the ambitions of the Openai data center.

When I asked if he imagined that Optai ultimately resembling the alphabet, where research benefits from the constellation of experimental Paris, he did not hesitate to the need for another leader. “We have a large consumer technology company. We have this mega -scale infrastructure project for humanity. We have a research laboratory. And then we have all the new things – robots, devices, BCI, crazy ideas. I cannot manage four companies. It is an open question if I can execute one, but I can’t run four.”

For the moment, Altman will remain directly involved in the efforts of calculation, research and equipment of OpenAi consumers with Jony IVE. The new BCI startup that he co -worn with the CEO of Worldcoin Alex Blania will sit entirely outside Openai. Within the company, its direct reports should be presidents Greg Brockman (which oversees scaling efforts like Stargate), director of research Mark Chenchief scientist Jakub PachockiVP consumer equipment Peter Wrelinderand security chief Johannes Heidecke.

Simo, on the other hand, will inherit the responsibility of what Altman calls the “great technology of consumers” of Openai. Although the reporting lines have not been finalized, it should supervise COO Brad LightcapCFO Sarah FriarCpo Kevin Weilsoftware engineer chief Srinivas NarayananAnd the leaders of marketing, policies, legal and HR.

It will not be an easy to manage team. Several of these leaders are already closely aligned with Altman (Lightcap) or have themselves been CEOs (Weil and Friar). In addition to that, Simo will have to replace the chief of people Julia VillagraWho was not promoted in March but announced this week that she was leaving to continue “art, music and narration to help people better understand the transition to Act”.

Simo’s official title – Applications – is revealing. Today, Openai has only one application: Chatgpt. The next one is likely to be a browser, while the first monetization effort under its watch will probably be affiliate links in the results of Chatgpt purchases, which could be launched this fall.

Beyond a Slack message presenting to the employees and a blog post last month overflowing with optimism of the AGE era, Simo did not exhibit a public vision for the consumption strategy of Chatgpt or Openai. This is only the first week, and she always meets with the teams and informed. But given the speed at which Openai moves, it will not take long before we hear more of her.

“Many AI talents came to Google and Google Deepmind than what left it, especially among our best competitors.” – Google VP John Casey During a meeting of employees all the hands.

“I would say that the number of people I would trust with a giant calculation amount to do is probably the least 150.” Amazon’s leader, David LuanOn the size of the market for the best AI talents in a conversation with me Decoder.

Elon Musk approach Mark Zuckerberg “On potential financing agreements or investments” for its takeover of Openai earlier this year. – Openai lawyers in a memory of the court. Eh?

Interesting career movements this week:

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