Roughly 400,000 after the Big Bang, once the Universe had sufficiently cooled, light began to stream across the cosmos. Today, we can detect this light, which forms the cosmic microwave background (CMB), and use it to learn of the Universe’s infancy, evolution, and large-scale structure. As the Simons Observatory, located in Chile’s northern Atacama Desert, comes online, we are on the precipice of measuring the CMB with exquisite precision and unlocking new insights into the Universe. The observatory’s three 0.5 m small-aperture telescopes aim to constrain models of inflation while its 6 m large-aperture telescope will investigate a range of probes of large-scale structure. This talk will introduce the CMB and its rich scientific content, show how this has motivated the design and construction of the Simons Observatory, and discuss some of its experimental considerations as well as outlooks towards multi-dataset analyses.