From his birth in a family of fishermen to Number 2 of one of the leaders of technology in the world: it is the dazzling destiny of the Franco-American Fidji Simo. Having worked with prestigious companies, the businesswoman has just been appointed general manager of applications at OpenAI, the American artificial intelligence company behind ChatGPT.
Born in Sète in the Occitanie region, Fidji Simo was very far from the world of technology in her youth. While her family worked in fishing and her mother ran a fashion boutique, the young woman quickly distinguished herself by obtaining her baccalaureate at 16 years old. Integrated at HEC, she does internships at Ebay, in France, before leaving for the American continent.
From Sète to Facebook
Then 26 years old, Fidji Simo joins a company that could not be more flourishing and popular in 2011: Facebook. Integrated into marketing teams, she quickly climbs the ladder from Mobile Advertising Manager to Vice-President in charge of video, games and mobile advertising.
2016 marks one of the first major turning points in his career. Taken over from a certain impostor syndrome, Fidji Simo participates in the launch of Facebook Live and the autoplay function. “Fiji is an incredible leader. From our meeting eight years ago, I understood that she was one of those rare leaders who both have an overall vision and who go to the heart of details to carry out their mission,” greeted her former superior Sheryl Sanberg in an article by Marie-Claire. In 2019, she became director of the Facebook application.
After 10 years of loyal service, the thirty-something is saying goodbye to Facebook to work at Instacard, a start-up that offers food delivery services. “She turned competitors grocers into allies through revenue-sharing models. She positioned Instacart for the IPO by diversifying revenue beyond the pandemic economy. It was not luck, but operational control” mentions Kevin Henrikson, one of his former collaborators, in a message about X. After 10 years of losses, the platform is going back into the green in 2022.
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Also in 2021, she became a member of the board of directors of Shopify, an e-commerce platform. But that’s not all since she is named by Fortune in the list of 40 people under 40 years old in full ascension and who “have shaped the global experience of the pandemic and pave the way for the future”. In 2023, she ranks 74th among the 100 most powerful women in the world, according to another ranking by the media.
And rightly so since, besides his impressive career, Fidji Simo has been involved in several causes. She joined an association called Women in Product, aiming to promote the place of women in new technologies, and co-founded a medical center and a research institute specialized in neuroimmune disorders (Covid-long, endometriosis…).
Consecration at OpenAI
After joining the board of directors of OpenAI (which includes ChatGPT), Fidji Simo became General Manager of Applications in May 2025, under the direction of Sam Altman.
“The arrival of Fiji is a bit of an OpenAI ambition statement. It means that we want to develop applications that will be at the heart of people’s lives. Then, we will be creative on monetizations and that, she knows how to do,’ declared to AFP Julien Codorniou, who worked with her when he was vice-president of Facebook.
The one described by Les Echos as ‘the most powerful French woman in tech’ is responsible for supervising the traditional functions of the company, namely the operational and commercial teams responsible for making AI research accessible to the entire world, as Sam Altman explains. She will notably take care of the assistant ChatGPT, the essential AI for 500 million weekly users, by boosting its distribution on third-party platforms but also by selling AI models to companies. In short, an ultra strategic position that makes the French one of the most influential people in tech today.
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In an interview for LSA, Fidji Simo shares his convictions in the field. For her, “AI revolutionizes health first,” then education. For the businesswoman, this new technology resonates as an opportunity to analyze, process a large mass of data and develop her skills.
“With generative AI, we will be able to answer questions that we couldn’t address before. For years, people have been trained to enter a keyword in a search engine to buy something. But this is not how we reason” explains the new applications director of ChatGPT, who has just integrated a shopping tool.
While Vivatech, the largest European event dedicated to innovation and technology, is being orchestrated from June 11 to 14 in Paris, Fiji Simo is a model of success in this industry of the future and proves to the whole world that France is not left behind in terms of digital talents.
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Featured photo : © Instagram Fidji Simo
