Fidji Simo is giving up her full-time job leading OpenAI’s AGI work and will become a part-time adviser, she said in a post on X. The move removes a recently installed executive from one of OpenAI’s most loaded jobs at a time when the company has already been rearranging its top ranks with unusual frequency.
Simo said the decision followed a medical leave she began three months ago after what she described as a severe flare-up of a chronic illness she has had for seven years. She wrote on X that recovery would be longer and more complicated than she expected, and that she needed to focus on it fully.
“It has been a jarring experience to spend my days helping build the future while simultaneously navigating a disabling disease that still has no cure,” Simo wrote.
Simo announced in April that she would take several weeks of leave because of a neuroimmune condition, shortly after she had moved into the AGI chief role. Before that, she had been OpenAI’s CEO of applications, a job centered on the company’s user-facing products rather than the broader AGI portfolio.
OpenAI’s executive map keeps changing
Simo’s departure from the full-time role lands in a broader reshuffle at OpenAI. Around the time of her April leave announcement, chief operating officer Brad Lightcap stepped away from that job to work on “special projects.” Chief marketing officer Kate Rouch also stepped down to focus on her health, with Simo saying then that Rouch planned to return in a more limited role when able.
OpenAI assigned other executives to cover the territory while Simo was out. President Greg Brockman was set to oversee product, including the company’s work on a so-called super app. Chief strategy officer Jason Kwon, chief financial officer Sarah Friar and chief revenue officer Denise Dresser were put in charge of the business side.
That setup did not last long. The Verge reported that OpenAI changed the structure again in mid-May, with Brockman formally taking over product strategy and “scaling.” According to a memo The Verge said it reviewed, Brockman’s remit covered four areas: core product and platform; critical enterprise industries; consumer businesses including health, commerce and personal finance; and core infrastructure, ads, data science and growth.
In that memo, Brockman said the reorganization was meant to focus OpenAI’s work on AI agents by combining products into “a single agentic platform” and bringing ChatGPT and Codex into one unified agent experience, according to The Verge. That is OpenAI management-speak, but the plain version is that Brockman was consolidating product lines that had been developing in parallel.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman responded to Simo’s announcement on X, saying he was “really sad about this” and grateful to her.
OpenAI has not named a new full-time AGI chief in the reported announcement. For now, Simo’s move leaves another top OpenAI title functionally folded into the company’s ongoing executive rework.
This story draws on original reporting from The Verge.
