Fidji Simo, OpenAI’s No. 2 executive, is stepping down from her full-time position, the Wall Street Journal reports.
In a staff memo Thursday, Simo said her ongoing medical leave has proven longer and more difficult than expected and that she will move into a part-time consulting role. Simo joined OpenAI’s board in 2024 and joined OpenAI in May 2025 as Chief Applications Officer, then a new role reporting directly to Sam Altman that unified the company’s business and product functions.
Her appointment came with a broader reporting change: COO Brad Lightcap, CFO Sarah Friar and CPO Kevin Weil began reporting to her, while Altman stepped back to focus on research, computing and security.
Simo first revealed her health issues in April when she announced she was taking medical leave to deal with a relapse of a neuro-immune condition. the same note publicly announced that Lightcap was moving into a new “special projects” role and that CMO Kate Rouch was leaving the company to focus on cancer recovery. Weil has left the company as well.
Simo came to OpenAI from Instacart, where he was CEO from 2021 and led the company to its 2023 IPO, and before that spent over a decade at Meta, including running the Facebook app.
Simo’s decision to step down permanently leaves Altman searching for a successor as OpenAI itself considers a potential IPO. She had been widely seen as a potential candidate to take on even more responsibilities once OpenAI went public, making this a real void for her to address.
Simo focused primarily on developing OpenAI’s consumer business. However, ChatGPT’s growth slowed late last year, missing internal revenue targets, prompting the company to shift more to coding tools, an area where it was, and continues to be for now, behind Anthropic.
TechCrunch reached out to OpenAI for more information.
Shortly after the Journal story broke, Simo shared the news directly in X, after which Altman he respondedalso on X: “I’m really saddened by this and very grateful for everything fidji has done for openai, and even more grateful for her friendship and who she is as a person. We all wish her the best for a speedy recovery. this sucks.”
Simo’s announcement lands on a busy day of OpenAI news. Earlier Thursday, the company introduced its new family of GPT-5.6 models — Sol, Terra and Luna — along with a new agent called ChatGPT Work, designed to handle multi-step office tasks such as writing documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Both releases were framed by OpenAI as directly targeting Anthropic.
OpenAI’s executive ranks look from the outside like nothing for a company that was recently assigned an $852 billion valuation. In addition to Altman, Lightcap, Friar and co-founder Greg Brockman (who is also the company’s president and oversaw product strategy while Simo was out), his bench includes Denise Dresser, who in December became the company’s chief revenue officer, overseeing “global revenue strategy across the business and customer success, by business.”
It wouldn’t be shocking to see Desser take on a more expansive role, given that she previously spent two years as Slack’s CEO and, before that, spent 14 years at Slack’s parent company, Salesforce.
Simo’s departure comes against another backdrop worth understanding: OpenAI’s changing approach to worker justice. In April of last year, the same month Simo joined, the company reduced the vesting cliff — the waiting period before new hires’ stock grants start vesting — from the industry standard 12 months to 6 months. Then, in December, OpenAI completely removed the cliff for new hires, letting equity start vesting from day one.
The move, described internally by Simo as a way to allow employees to “take risks” without fear of losing equity if they leave early, comes amid an escalating AI talent war and reflects how aggressively OpenAI is spending to retain staff. The company was projected to spend $6 billion on stock-based compensation in 2025 alone.
None of the aforementioned exits appear to be linked to compensation. Executive share packages are usually traded individually and could have completely different vesting terms.
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