Dive Brief:
- Instacart announced Wednesday that Chief Business Officer Chris Rogers will become CEO, effective Aug. 15. He will replace Fidji Simo, who is stepping down from the top position to become CEO of OpenAI Applications but will remain chair of Instacart’s board.
- Rogers will step into the top role after nearly six years with the grocery technology company, including around three years in his current role.
- Instacart positioned Rogers as a leader with decades of experience spanning consumer goods, technology, retail and media, noting that he has focused on “driving growth at the intersection of brands, retailers, and technology” in his current role.
Dive Insight:
In announcing Simo’s upcoming departure from the CEO position, Instacart had said it would choose an existing member of the company’s management team. Instacart’s choice of Rogers as its next leader signals the company is continuing its strategy of bridging retailers, consumers and advertisers with technology-driven solutions.
Rogers has seen Instacart’s evolution both before and after Simo’s arrival in 2021.
He joined Instacart as vice president of global retail in 2019 after 11 years at Apple, where he served in a variety of roles, including head of consumer retail, head of carrier channel and managing director of Apple Canada.
Prior to Apple, Rogers worked at Procter & Gamble as an account executive for several clients such as Loblaws, Sobeys and A&P, according to his LinkedIn profile.
As chief business officer, Rogers has overseen the company’s commercial operations, including retailer relationships and expansions, ad sales, mergers and acquisitions, Instacart Business and Instacart Health.
Rogers currently sits on the board of data and analytics firm Spins and is a board member of the Ad Council, a nonprofit that helps launch public service campaigns addressing social issues.
Rogers’s ascension to the top role follows Instacart’s work to establish itself as a leader in grocery technology and e-commerce
“Over the last four years, we’ve transformed Instacart into a growing, profitable, leading technology platform that’s helping reshape the grocery industry,” Simo said in the announcement. “We’re building a generational company at the intersection of technology and food, and Chris is the right leader for our next chapter.”
Simo “really set up a foundation” for the company to continue achieving double-digit growth and building its e-grocery market leadership, CFO Emily Reuter said during the J.P. Morgan Global Technology, Media and Communications Conference earlier this month.
“The priorities remain the same, which is that we continue to be incredibly excited about the overall market opportunity, and really, our goal as the category leader … is to continue to drive online penetration,” she said at the conference.
