Fidji Simo steps down from OpenAI's No. 2 role

Fidji 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 will transition to a part-time advisory role instead.

Simo joined OpenAI's board of directors in 2024 and joined the company in May 2025 as CEO of Applications, a newly created role reporting directly to Sam Altman that consolidated business and product operations. Her appointment triggered 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. Weil has since left the company.

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 to focus on cancer recovery.

Simo's decision to step back leaves Altman searching for a successor right as OpenAI itself eyes a possible IPO. She had been widely seen as a likely candidate to take on even more responsibility once OpenAI went public. 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, where it has been trailing Anthropic.

On Thursday, OpenAI 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. Both releases were framed as directly targeting Anthropic.

OpenAI's executive ranks appear thin for a company with an $852 billion valuation. In addition to Altman, Lightcap, Friar, and co-founder Greg Brockman (president), the bench includes Denise Dresser, who joined in December as chief revenue officer, overseeing global revenue strategy. Given her past as CEO of Slack for two years, she could take on a more expansive role.

Simo's departure comes against the backdrop of OpenAI's shifting approach to employee equity. In April 2025, the company shortened its vesting cliff from the standard 12 months to 6 months. In December, OpenAI eliminated the cliff altogether for new hires, allowing equity to start vesting from day one. Simo described the move as a way to let employees "take risks" without fear of losing equity if let go early. The company was projected to spend $6 billion on stock-based compensation in 2025 alone. None of the recent exits appear tied to compensation, as executive equity packages are typically negotiated individually.

Simo previously served as CEO of Instacart from 2021 through its 2023 IPO, and before that spent over a decade at Meta, including running the Facebook app.