Nscale, a buzzy UK-based AI data center startup, has appointed former OpenAI, Meta and Instacart executive Fiji Simo to its board of directors.
Simo will join prominent technology executives Sheryl Sandberg, Susan Decker and Nick Clegg on Nscale’s board of directors ahead of the startup’s planned IPO this fall.
Simo, the former CEO of OpenAI’s AGI Deployment and effectively the No. 2 executive at AI Labs, left the company in July citing health reasons. She still advises the company part-time. Prior to joining OpenAI, Simo served as Chairman and CEO of Instacart, leading the company through its IPO in 2023. She also spent more than a decade at Meta, including as head of the Facebook app. Mr. Simo is also an executive at Shopify.
Nscale founder and CEO Josh Payne said Simo is one of the few leaders who understands 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 developing at Nscale,” he said in a statement. “Fiji joins a board that we purposely built with his experience in scaling the world’s largest platform and the independence, financial rigor and operational depth that a company of this size possesses.”
Nscale’s valuation has soared since its founding just two years ago, driven by growing demand for AI infrastructure. The startup, which designs, builds and operates AI data centers, is seeking to raise up to $3.5 billion ahead of a planned IPO, Bloomberg reported last week, citing anonymous sources.
