Fidji Simo leaving OpenAI full-time, shifting to adviser

Fidji Simo, OpenAI’s chief executive of AGI deployment, is leaving her full-time role and transitioning to a part-time adviser, she announced on X. The move follows a monthslong medical leave prompted by a severe exacerbation of a chronic neuroimmune condition she has managed for seven years.

What changed and when?

Simo will step back from day-to-day work and take an advisory role after a medical leave that she said began three months earlier, with an April memo to staff describing the relapse and need for new treatments. She joined OpenAI’s board of directors in March 2024, and Wired says Sam Altman hired her the following year to run the company’s product and business organizations. TechCrunch gives a tighter timeline, noting she joined OpenAI in May 2025 as CEO of Applications. Simo has previously been CEO of Instacart and ran the Facebook app at Meta; Wired also reports she was diagnosed with postural tachycardia syndrome, or POTS, in 2019.

How has OpenAI already reorganized around her absence?

OpenAI shuffled several senior roles while Simo was on leave: Brad Lightcap moved to oversee special projects, Greg Brockman took over product strategy, and the company repositioned Thibault Sottiaux as head of core products, including ChatGPT. Wired says the company merged teams working on ChatGPT, its AI-powered browser, and an AI coding agent into a single “superapp” and has shut down distant bets like Sora. TechCrunch adds that the company released a new GPT-5.6 family of models and an agent called ChatGPT Work on the same day Simo’s status was announced, underscoring a busy product calendar.

What did Simo say?

Simo wrote that, "Three months ago, I had to go on medical leave after a severe exacerbation of a chronic illness I’ve lived with for seven years." She also told staff that she had postponed medical tests and new therapies for her entire time at OpenAI to avoid missing work, and that she now needs to focus on stabilizing her health.

Why it matters

Simo’s role had centralized the company’s product and business operations at a sensitive moment: OpenAI is concentrating on a smaller set of core products and preparing for an eventual public offering. Wired reports the company now expects an IPO in 2027 and is targeting a $1 trillion valuation. TechCrunch adds context on OpenAI’s recent valuation discussions, noting the company was most recently assigned an $852 billion valuation. The leadership shifts arrive as OpenAI pushes agentic features into ChatGPT and moves to combine products, while TechCrunch reports ChatGPT’s growth cooled late last year and missed internal revenue targets, pushing the company to lean more heavily into coding tools.

Simo’s departure therefore creates a practical leadership gap in consumer and product execution at a moment when OpenAI is consolidating product teams and racing peers on agentic features. It also concentrates pressure on remaining senior executives to show progress ahead of the company’s stated IPO timeline.

What to watch

Who Sam Altman names to replace Simo in a full-time capacity, and whether Denise Dresser or another senior executive expands responsibilities, will be the clearest signal of how OpenAI plans to stabilize its product and go-to-market leadership. Also watch uptake of the recent ChatGPT agent update and the new GPT model family as short-term indicators of product momentum ahead of the company’s stated IPO target in 2027.