Fidji Simo has stepped down from her full-time position as OpenAI's chief of artificial general intelligence (AGI) work and is moving into a "part-time advisor" role, she announced on X. The move follows a period of medical leave prompted by a chronic neuroimmune condition, and marks the latest in a series of significant leadership changes at the company over recent months. Simo said her recovery was proving "much longer and more complex" than anticipated, requiring her full attention.

Simo had taken on the AGI chief title shortly before announcing in April that she would take medical leave; she was previously OpenAI's CEO of applications. Her departure came amid wider C-suite upheaval: COO Brad Lightcap stepped back to focus on "special projects", and CMO Kate Rouch stepped down for health reasons. In a mid-May reorganisation, president Greg Brockman took charge of product strategy and "scaling" across four pillars, aiming to merge ChatGPT and Codex into a single agentic platform. Simo, who has lived with the illness for seven years, described the experience as "jarring", while CEO Sam Altman said he was "really sad" about the news and expressed gratitude to her.