Why OpenAI Hired Instacart's CEO - DTNSB SPECIAL
14:55 Share

Six months from now, you could be running a 5K, booking that dream trip, or seeing thicker, fuller hair every time you look in the mirror. Through HERS, you can get dermatologist-trusted, clinically proven prescriptions with ingredients that go beyond what over-the-counter products offer. Whether you prefer oral or topical treatments, HERS has you covered.

Getting started is simple. Just fill out an intake form online and a licensed provider will recommend a customized plan just for you. The best part? Everything is 100% online. If prescribed, your treatment ships right to your door. No pharmacy trips, no waiting rooms, and no insurance headaches.

Plus, treatments start at just $35 a month. Start your initial free online visit today at aforhers.com slash deal. That's F-O-R-H-E-R-S dot com slash deal. Compounded products are not FDA approved or verified for safety, effectiveness, or quality. Prescription required. Price varies based on product and subscription plan. See website for full details, restrictions, and important safety information. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.

Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try it at Progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states.

What does the term digital workplace mean to you? In today's world of AI, robotics, and AR, it's much more than an office full of people on computers. It can be anywhere from a factory floor to the top of a crane to the cockpit of an F1 car. Wherever your digital workplace may be, TeamViewer's mission is to make work, work better.

How? By securely connecting your people with the data, expertise, or insights they need in real time to make work more efficient. By automating and streamlining IT and OT support to fix problems before they happen to make work more productive. And by bringing all the possibilities of a secure and flexible digital workplace to all your people everywhere to make work more innovative.

So discover how TeamViewer can make work, work better, wherever it happens across your business. Learn more at teamviewer.com slash work better.

Picture this. You're in the garage, hands covered in grease, just finished up tuning your engine with a part you found on eBay. And you realize, you know what? I could also use new brakes. So where do you go next? Back to eBay. And you've got eBay guaranteed fit. You order a part, and if it doesn't fit, send it back. Simple as that.

So when you dive into your next car project, start with eBay. All the parts you need at prices you'll love. Guaranteed to fit every time. eBay. Things people love.

Hello, everybody, and welcome to another weekend edition of the Daily Tech News Show. This might become a habit. We'll see. I'm Tom Merritt, and this week, I wanted to spend a little extra time talking to Andrew Main, a

who is the founder of AI deployment firm Interdimensional, but also a former OpenAI employee. He is doing some contracting work with OpenAI, so you should know that before we hear him talk about it. But I wanted to get...

from him an explanation of why OpenAI would want to hire Instacart's CEO, Fiji Simo, to become the CEO of applications. And why would Fiji Simo want to leave Instacart? Why would Simo...

While she's getting a CEO title, why would she not want to be the CEO the way she is at Instacart? She is a board member at OpenAI. So I called up Andrew to talk to him. And gratefully, he is joining us to talk about OpenAI's coming CEO of product. Andrew Main, thanks for joining me, man. Hey, Tom. Good to see you. Yeah. Listen.

I was befuddled at first when I only read a headline that that's always the case. If you only read the headline, uh, that the CEO of Instacart, uh, uh, was coming over to become the CEO of applications at open AI. Uh, but then I immediately texted Andrew and Andrew, you pointed out that Fiji CMO, uh, before Instacart, uh, was working at Facebook, uh,

What do you think OpenAI is up to by hiring Fiji Simo in as the applications person, the CEO of applications? So, you know, we just had news has been breaking about an acquisition of Windsurf, right? So Windsurf is this code editor similar to Kurtzer, similar to Microsoft's VS Code with Copilot and Vue.

you've seen this sort of expansion now that's become apparent that like, if you kind of follow the clues, is that like they're getting more into product and

And initially when my first role there back when I worked there, by the way, was kind of like doing fast prototypes of stuff, seeing it was possible. And this was five years ago of like, hey, where could it be? So there was always this sort of thought of like where things would go into the future. And then with ChatGPT, you know, when ChatGPT launched, it really was a research preview of,

and it wasn't a product. And one of the members of the computing team went in, who knew iOS, built the first prototype app, and that was just two years ago. And so now you've had this expansion of product, which has happened very, very quickly. You have ChatGBT, the Windsurf thing, if that shakes out. That's another thing. And it means that there's a lot of surface area for customer experience, a lot of surface area for trying to keep things going and flowing and keeping product shipping going.

And meanwhile, opening eye is trying to do research, still trying to keep ahead with frontier models, as well as yesterday, Sam tweeted out photos, Sam Altman tweeted out photos of them on in Abilene, Texas, where they're building Stargate and building this half trillion dollar or more complex of data centers, you know, global data centers for training, et cetera, which means that, you know, it's an, it's a very, very rapidly expanding company. I was, I,

When I started, it was in the Pioneer office, which was this small building, you know, historic building where several startups have been located. It had been a Stripe office before. And then they expanded into a new facility, which was a four-story building, which is great. Like, oh, this will be good for years. Yeah.

Turned out that wasn't the case. I was just at one of the new offices in Mission Bay, which is one of a couple, which was like a seven-floor thing that was a full business. And it's crazy. So what I'd say is that you need somebody, you need talent to come in and you need talent internally and externally that understands kind of like –

customer facing stuff, how to do this. There's just a lot of expansion. She brings a lot of great experience because she spent a decade at Facebook working on a bunch of different products and helping them ship and a very pivotal time for that company and rapid expansion. So I think that's really what you're seeing here is getting, you know, experienced people who've worked at other companies and have a successful track record of building out.

Yeah, vice president of video games and monetization at Facebook when video games and monetization at Facebook was in its prime, right? That's a good track record. Instacart has, I think, surprised a lot of people with how well it's done. That's a good track record. She was one of the new board members that came into OpenAI, so she's familiar. It's not like they're bringing in someone totally unfamiliar. What struck me, though, was in the announcement, Altman saying...

that open ai is a product company and an infrastructure company that was very reminiscent of the amazon aws uh kind of split and it seems like he is over compute still well uh cfo and product and all of that is going to be under simo uh is that a future do you think for open ai where they they become a infrastructure provider for others not just for themselves i

Well, I think – I don't know. Again, let me be very clear. I have no internal knowledge of anything going on here. And so everything I say is pure speculation. So infrastructure can be looked at in a number of ways, like literally is building out the – as we saw yesterday, he's holding the shovel and got the hard hat. Right. Literally helping build out the infrastructure they're going to need.

to basically help OpenAI provide the both. Remember, they have a couple products right now. They have ChatGPT and then they have the API. And the API is where you're getting a lot of high growth, which people are using that to power their other business. We just saw that Netflix is now using that to power recommendations. And you're seeing this all these other places. So you could look at it from the point of view of providing inference, providing the API access is a form of that.

Yeah, that is also an infrastructure. That's a really good point. And then you have the nonprofit, as we covered earlier in the week, OpenAI will become a public benefit company. So get rid of the profit cap, but the nonprofit is going to stay in control. And so Altman was saying a lot of things about continuing that mission as well. So you kind of got three businesses there, I guess. Yeah.

Yeah, well, yeah, there's, you know, there's, yeah, you know, it's a, there's different kinds of concerns. And then within the company itself, like,

Research is still like the mitochondria that drives opening eye. You know, research is really, that is, it's, it's a very, they have a great relationship with, I was able to sit down and talk with the current head of research, Mark Chen and Nick Turley recently. And kind of, you know, you see, it's a really genuine conversation and relationship between them where at other companies, it's very far apart is that you have product people in one end and research somewhere else. And every now and then research does a presentation and product is like, Oh yeah. Well,

We want to do something with that. And I think that the organization certainly has these different kind of components to it. And having to manage all that is certainly, you know, fast moving. Picture this. You're in the garage, hands covered in grease, just finished up tuning your engine with a part you found on eBay. And you realize, you know what?

I could also use new brakes. So where do you go next? Back to eBay. You can find anything there. It's unreal. Wipers, headlights, even cold air intakes. It's all there. And you've got eBay guaranteed fit. You order a part, and if it doesn't fit, send it back. Simple as that.

Look, DIY fixes can be major. Doesn't matter if it's just maintenance or a major mod. You got it, especially when things are guaranteed to fit. So when you dive into your next car project, start with eBay. All the parts you need at prices you'll love. Guaranteed to fit every time. eBay. Things people love.

Now at Verizon, we have some big news for your peace of mind. For all our customers, existing and new, we're locking in low prices for three years guaranteed on MyPlan and MyHome. That's future you peace of mind. And everyone can save on a brand new phone on MyPlan when you trade in any phone from one of our top brands. That's new phone peace of mind. Because at Verizon, whether you're already a customer or you're just joining us,

We got you. Visit Verizon today. Price guarantee applies to then current base monthly rate. Additional terms and conditions apply for all offers. Hold that, sir. There's no time for pickleball because you're going to want to hear this. Noom now has GLP-1s. No way. Oh, yes way, Fred. Psychology and meds. That's how Noom helps you lose the weight and keep it off. And they start at just $149 and they're shipped to your door in seven days. Holy smokes, that's fast. But not as fast as my service game. Hey, who's ready to get pickled?

Get started with the Noom GLP-1 program today. Individual results may vary. Not all customers will medically qualify. No affiliation with Novo Nordisk Inc. Compounded medications are not reviewed by the FDA for safety, efficacy, or quality. Not available in all states.

avoiding your unfinished home projects because you're not sure where to start thumbtack knows home so you don't have to don't know the difference between matte paint finish and satin or what that clunking sound from your dryer is with thumbtack you don't have to be a home pro you just have to hire one you can hire top rated pros see price estimates and read reviews all on the app download today

If you're running a business, you know that every time you miss a call, you're leaving money on the table. When every customer conversation matters, you need a phone system that keeps up and helps you stay connected 24-7. That's why you need Open Phone. Open Phone is the number one business phone system that streamlines and scales your customer communications.

It works through an app on your phone or computer, so no more carrying two phones or using a landline. Plus, say goodbye to voicemail. Their AI agent can be set up in minutes to handle calls after hours, answer questions, and capture leads so you never miss a customer. Open Phone is offering our listeners 20% off of your first six months at openphone.com slash business. That's O-P-E-N-P-H-O-N-E dot com slash business.

And if you have existing numbers with another service, Open Phone will port them over at no extra charge. Open Phone. No missed calls. No missed customers. This is going to present a new way of doing things. Everything was a little tighter as you were just describing. And this won't be quite as tight when you have a separate organization with a separate CEO. Yeah, I think the challenge is...

Finding people who have been at companies have scaled very quickly and successfully is very critical. And I think Sam has had a very good sense of what kind of talents and stuff are extremely useful. And I think that's what we can see here.

Yeah. And Instacart is a good example of that in the track record for CMO. Also, still co-founder of Metrodora, which is a really interesting healthcare effort. Yeah. That was something that's going to bring up is that having worked in sort of the sciences space or helping managing researchers and work with something like that is absolutely a super critical skill for somebody who wants to go into step into opening AI. Because like I said, it is very much a research org.

And that, you know, she has both an experience with a high growth company like Facebook and also working with, you know, that front end research. And it's crazy because like I, you know, one of the, one of my clients I was helping out, we were speaking with somebody at OpenAI earlier in the week about some health data stuff and then some questions about that. And then the person I was speaking to like, oh, we should talk to the health team.

I'm like, we have a health team now? And that was like, yeah, we do. And that was, you know, incredible. But it was like, you know, just coming from when I was there was like a little over 200 people to there's like, you know, now being outside and watching, like there's an entire division of people focusing on AI and health data, et cetera. So you just get a sense of for, you know, how many different areas in which they're being involved with and how critical it is to bringing people with great skills for those. Yeah.

Yeah, it does seem like, you know, the knee-jerk reaction might be to look at this and say, oh, Altman is doing the Larry and Sergei thing, and Simo is set up to be the Satya Nadella. It's probably not that simple, although there are parallels. Well, there was an Eric Schmidt in between there, and that worked out really well. Don't forget. Hopefully, none of them are the Eric Schmidt of the situation. But yeah, I feel like...

You are going to be surprised how many things OpenAI does, because I think people think about it as just the chat GPT folks. But this is an indication that not only do they have plans to be more than just chat GP, just to be a chat bot, but they also have a lot of efforts underway for that. And you think about, look at the growth of chat GPT itself, what it did two years ago and what it does now. Both.

both from, you know, if you're using a desktop version, you can connect it to other applications. It'll be able to, you know, it does that. You can set up, you know, time things or it does things and tell it like, Hey, I need you to go do a thing, you know, in 12 hours or whatever, repeating jobs and stuff.

the kind of the level of document handling, et cetera. And again, it's a competitive space. You know, you have Anthropic, which is building out their product, which I think, I think Anthropic's doing really good stuff, really good work. I think Claude is very solid and they, they, they had, you know, their, I think their, their document implementation, which was really good. And I think that you're seeing a lot of parity between this, but a lot of just, just in general, these clients are moving very, very, very fast and just taking on more work.

And I'll tell you, like, just just kind of an anecdote, too, is that outside of kind of the world of programming, the acquisition of Windsurf didn't make a lot of news. But these tools, when you use, you know, what we call, you know, IDs, when you use these tool, you know, for developing software, et cetera, and you have them tied into AI systems like ChatGPT or Claude or some other system, right?

What happens is they have control over, let's say, a certain area like a file directory. And you can do a lot of things besides write software.

You can open up Windsurf right now and say, hey, I want to write a book. I need you to create five folders. Create one folder for notes, one folder for my outline, one folder for my chapters, and then one folder for interviews. And it will create those right now. You can download right now. It will do that. It'll create those folders. You can say, hey, start writing some notes. You can copy paste URLs or text into it, and it will start filling out note cards and stuff, which is way outside of

kind of like the, the intended use ostensibly, but you start to think about, Oh man, when I start taking these AI systems and give it control with file systems, my computer, it does a lot of tasks that are useful to people who aren't trying to write code. Yeah. And I imagine there's opportunity to make specializations and branded versions of that sort of thing to, to market it that way that they want CMO to do. Yeah. Yeah. I think there's,

There is no shortage of direction and capability of what can be built. The hard part is getting it out the door and building and making sure that stuff ships. That's really the hard part is that, is that, you know, it opening. I was always like, you, you have, you have, everybody has ideas, work, go, and they're great ideas. It's just not enough hands, not enough managers to make it happen. And that's what they're trying to rectify now.

Yeah, yeah. Well, this definitely helps me wrap my head around this a little better, and it makes perfect sense. And if anybody doesn't know Fiji Simo's story, which I did not until recently, she's an impressive executive and somebody worth looking into and reading about if you haven't already.

As are you, Andrew Main, an impressive person. Thanks for helping me understand this. If folks want to understand AI more, I highly recommend they subscribe to the Attention Mechanism, which you can get wherever fine podcasts are vended, hosted by Justin Robert Young and Andrew. Anything about that more or anything else you want to tell folks about before I let you go?

Yeah. I mean, we're still figuring out kind of where, you know, where our audience is and the kind of things we like to talk about. Feedback is absolutely wonderful. You know, we're, we're trying to make something that's, that can kind of be a bit insidery, but not too technical, you know, insidery and something that's broadly available. And yeah,

It's been really, really fun to do that podcast with Justin and just talk about AI because it is a very fast-moving space. And it's not one of these things where you get up to speed and walk away for six months and come back and expect it to be the same.

Yeah. And it is, I don't mean this to sound like a backhanded compliment, but I obviously started listening because I know you and Justin. I was like, oh, I want to hear what these guys are doing. And it's become required listening every time one comes out for me. Oh, wow. Well, glad to hear that. Yeah. I, you know, it's, it's, Justin's been the great driving force on that. So.

Well, thanks, Andrew, for joining us. I appreciate it, man. Thank you, Tom. Hey, big thanks to Andrew for contributing to today's show. Thank you for being along as well for Daily Tech News Show. Let me know what you think of these weekend additions. The show is made possible by our patrons, patreon.com slash DTNS. We will be back on Monday with a regular briefing. Talk to you then. The DTNS family of podcasts.

Helping each other understand. Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.

Now at Verizon, we have some big news for your peace of mind. For all our customers, existing and new, we're locking in low prices for three years guaranteed on MyPlan and MyHome. That's future you peace of mind. And everyone can save on a brand new phone on MyPlan when you trade in any phone from one of our top brands. That's new phone peace of mind. Because at Verizon, whether you're already a customer or you're just joining us,

We got you. Visit Verizon today. Price guarantee applies to then current base monthly rate. Additional terms and conditions apply for all offers. Hold that, sir. There's no time for pickleball because you're going to want to hear this. Noom now has GLP-1s. No way. Oh, yes way, Fred. Psychology and meds. That's how Noom helps you lose the weight and keep it off. And they start at just $149 and they're shipped to your door in seven days. Holy smokes, that's fast. But not as fast as my service game. Hey, who's ready to get pickled?

Get started with the Noom GLP-1 program today. Individual results may vary. Not all customers will medically qualify. No affiliation with Novo nor Disking. Compounded medications are not reviewed by the FDA for safety, efficacy, or quality. Not available in all states.