GoKawiilFidji Simo, OpenAI’s No. 2 executive, is stepping down from her full-time role, The Wall Street Journal reports.
In a staff note Thursday, Simo said her ongoing medical leave has proven longer and harder than expected, and that she’ll transition to a part-time advisory role instead. Simo joined OpenAI’s board of directors in 2024 and joined OpenAI in May 2025 as CEO of Applications, then a newly created role reporting directly to Sam Altman that consolidated the company’s business and product operations.
Her appointment came with a broader reporting shift: COO Brad Lightcap, CFO Sarah Friar, and CPO Kevin Weil all began reporting to her, while Altman stepped back to focus on research, compute, and safety.
Simo first disclosed her health issues in April, when she announced she was taking medical leave for a relapse of a neuroimmune condition; that same memo 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 since left the company, too.
Simo came to OpenAI from Instacart, where she’d been CEO since 2021 and led the company through its 2023 IPO, and before that spent over a decade at Meta, including running the Facebook app.
Simo’s decision to step back permanently leaves Altman searching for a successor right as OpenAI itself eyes a possible IPO. She’d been widely seen as a likely candidate to take on even more responsibility once OpenAI went public, making this a real vacuum for him to address.
Simo was primarily focused on growing OpenAI’s consumer business. But ChatGPT’s growth cooled late last year, missing internal revenue targets, pushing the company to lean harder into coding tools instead, an area where it has been, and for now continues to be, trailing Anthropic.
TechCrunch has reached out to OpenAI for more information.
Soon after the Journal story broke, Simo shared the news directly on X, after which Altman responded, also on X: “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.”
Simo’s announcement lands on a busy news day for OpenAI. Earlier Thursday, the company launched its new GPT-5.6 family of models — Sol, Terra, and Luna — alongside a new agent called ChatGPT Work, designed to handle multistep office tasks like drafting documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. Both releases were framed by OpenAI as directly targeting Anthropic.
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