Fidji Simo, OpenAI's Chief of Product and Business, has announced her decision to step down from her full-time role after her chronic illness became much worse than expected. In a staff note on July 9, Simo revealed that her ongoing medical leave has proven longer and harder than anticipated, forcing her to prioritize her health first. She will transition to becoming a part-time advisor at OpenAI while continuing to focus on her health and AI's role in healthcare. The transition comes after three months of medical leave since April, when she experienced a severe exacerbation of her chronic illness she's lived with for seven years.
As reported by Reuters, Simo's product and business responsibilities will be split between OpenAI President Greg Brockman, Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar, and Chief Strategy Officer Jason Kwon. However, she will continue to advise on OpenAI's consumer product, ads and health products. Her departure creates a significant leadership vacuum at a critical time as OpenAI eyes a possible IPO and races to catch up with rival Anthropic PBC in the enterprise market. Simo was widely seen as a likely candidate to take on even more responsibility once OpenAI went public, making this a real vacuum for CEO Sam Altman to address.
Simo revealed that she was diagnosed with Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS) in 2019, a rare condition with no known cure in which the heart shrinks and can no longer maintain normal blood pressure. In her X post, she described the impact of living with the illness, stating she's spent "countless hours in doctors' offices, dealing with symptoms, treatments, insurance, uncertainty, and all the invisible work that comes with being a patient." She admitted that she had ignored advice from doctors, friends and family for years, even when they encouraged her to slow down, saying "I am only making this decision now because I failed to make it many times before."
According to the report, Simo joined OpenAI in May 2025 to lead its applications business and was responsible for the company's efforts to expand its business model in the run-up to a potential initial public offering. The AI startup has faced intense competition from rival Anthropic PBC in areas such as coding agents, with OpenAI confidentially filing for a public listing last month and being valued at $852 billion in a fundraising round in March. Simo's illness has strengthened her belief that artificial intelligence should be used to solve real-life problems, especially in healthcare. She stated that AI has the potential to make people's lives easier by helping with health, finances, time and everyday challenges, adding that "More than ever, I believe that some of the most important opportunities for AI lie in helping people solve real problems in their daily lives: their health, their finances, their time and the everyday burdens that shape human experience."
As reported by CNBC, Simo is a French-American technology executive who joined OpenAI's board of directors in March 2024 before leaving Instacart to take up a full-time role at OpenAI as chief executive of applications and later worked on the deployment of artificial general intelligence. Before that, she served as chief executive officer of Instacart from 2021 and led the grocery delivery company through its 2023 initial public offering. She spent more than a decade at Meta, including Facebook, and became a board member of OpenAI in 2024. CEO Sam Altman responded to the news on X, stating "I am really sad about this and very grateful for all fidji has done for openai, and even grateful for her friendship and who she is as a person. we all wish her the best for a speedy recovery. this sucks." The announcement coincides with OpenAI's launch of new GPT-5.6 models and ChatGPT Work agent, both framed as targeting Anthropic in the enterprise market.
