Fidji Simo leaves full-time OpenAI AGI role for advisory post
Simo said her recovery from a chronic illness will require her full attention after she took medical leave earlier this year.
By James Whitfield · Staff Writer
3 min read
Fidji Simo is leaving her full-time role overseeing OpenAI’s AGI work and will become a part-time adviser, she said on X. The change removes a recently named senior leader from OpenAI’s executive ranks after months of internal role changes, according to The Verge.
Simo said she had gone on medical leave three months earlier after a severe flare-up of a chronic illness she has lived with for seven years. She said her recovery would take longer and be more complicated than she first expected, and that she needed to focus on it fully.
The Verge reported that Simo had announced in April that she would take a few weeks away from work because of a neuroimmune condition. That leave came shortly after she took the AGI chief title, according to The Verge, after previously serving as OpenAI’s CEO of applications.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman responded on X that he was “really sad about this” and said he was grateful to Simo. No replacement for Simo’s full-time AGI role was named in The Verge’s report.
Simo’s departure from the full-time post follows a period of management changes at OpenAI. Around the time of her April medical leave announcement, The Verge reported that chief operating officer Brad Lightcap stepped down from that role to focus on “special projects.”
The Verge also reported that OpenAI chief marketing officer Kate Rouch stepped back to focus on her health. At the time, Simo said Rouch planned to return to a role with a narrower scope when her health allowed it, according to The Verge.
During Simo’s leave, OpenAI president Greg Brockman was set to oversee product work, including the company’s super app efforts, The Verge reported. Chief strategy officer Jason Kwon, chief financial officer Sarah Friar and chief revenue officer Denise Dresser were expected to lead the business side, according to the same report.
The company’s structure changed again in mid-May, according to The Verge. Brockman formally took charge of product strategy and scaling, with four areas under him: core product and platform; critical enterprise industries; consumer work covering health, commerce and personal finance; and core infrastructure, ads, data science and growth.
In a May memo viewed by The Verge, Brockman wrote that the reorganization was meant to help OpenAI focus on its AI agent plans. The memo said the company would combine products to invest in one agentic platform and bring ChatGPT and Codex into a unified agentic experience.
Simo framed her decision as a health necessity in her X post. She said the experience had been jarring as she worked on future-facing technology while dealing with a disabling disease that has no cure.
This story draws on original reporting from The Verge.