OpenAI’s Fidji Simo steps down due to chronic illness, becomes advisor

Fidji Simo, OpenAI’s product and enterprise chief, on Thursday announced she is stepping down from her position on the artificial intelligence firm to concentrate on restoration after a “extreme exacerbation of a power sickness.”

Simo was recognized with Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome, or POTS, in 2019, and mentioned she’s been spending “numerous hours in medical doctors’ workplaces, coping with signs, remedies, insurance coverage, uncertainty, and all of the invisible work that comes with being a affected person.”

She stepped away from OpenAI in April for a medical leave. OpenAI President Greg Brockman took over product duties in Simo’s absence.

“After I went on depart, many individuals informed me I used to be brave for prioritizing my well being,” Simo wrote in a post on X on Thursday. “The reality is that I’m solely making this resolution now as a result of I did not make it many instances earlier than.”

Simo mentioned she is going to transition into a task as a part-time advisor at OpenAI.

OpenAI hired Simo in Might of 2025 to guide the corporate’s functions enterprise. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman mentioned in a memo on the time that Simo would “concentrate on enabling our ‘conventional’ firm features to scale as we enter a subsequent part of development.”

Final month OpenAI confidentially filed for an IPO, every week after rival Anthropic did the identical. Nonetheless, the corporate hasn’t provided a timeline for a public market debut and is reportedly laying aside these plans till at the very least subsequent yr.

Simo beforehand served as CEO of Instacart, the place she took the corporate public and helped to interrupt the longest tech IPO drought in three many years. She additionally spent greater than a decade in management roles at Meta, appearing as the pinnacle of Fb from 2019 till 2021.

“Two years after I bought sick, Fb provided me the chance to take a full yr of medical depart. I did not even pause to contemplate it. I instantly mentioned no,” Simo wrote on Thursday. She added that CEO Mark Zuckerberg “informed me I ought to play the lengthy sport. I want I had listened.”

Altman mentioned in a post on X that he is grateful for Simo’s contributions to the corporate, “and even grateful for her friendship and who she is as an individual.”

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