Simo left her role as CEO of AGI Deployment at OpenAI — effectively the No. 2 position at the AI lab — in July, citing health reasons, and continues to advise the company on a part-time basis. Before OpenAI, she served as chair and CEO of Instacart, leading it through its 2023 IPO, and spent more than a decade at Meta, including as head of the Facebook app. She also sits on Shopify’s board.
Nscale founder and CEO Josh Payne said in a statement that Simo is one of the few leaders who understand what it means to scale products used by billions of people and the demands those products place on the underlying systems. “That’s what we’re building for at Nscale. Fidji joins a board we’ve built deliberately, with the experience of scaling platforms to the largest in the world, and the independence, financial rigor and operating depth to which companies at this scale are held,” Payne said.
Nscale designs, builds and operates AI data centers. Founded just two years ago, its valuation has skyrocketed on the back of booming demand for AI infrastructure. Bloomberg reported last week, citing unnamed sources, that the startup is trying to raise up to $3.5 billion ahead of a planned IPO.