OpenAI · Wired
OpenAI’s Fidji Simo Is Taking Medical Leave Amid an Executive Shake-Up
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OpenAI announced a major reorganization on Friday as the company’s CEO of AGI deployment, Fidji Simo, takes medical leave to focus on her health.
Key facts
- Brad Lightcap, the chief operating officer and one of CEO Sam Altman’s top deputies, is transitioning to a “special projects” role
- OpenAI announced a major reorganization on Friday as the company’s CEO of AGI deployment, Fidji Simo, takes medical leave to focus on her health
- Simo joined OpenAI in August 2025, where she took over many of the company’s consumer-facing products, including ChatGPT, Codex, and the social-video app Sora
- OpenAI president Greg Brockman will handle the product teams in Simo’s absence
Summary
Brad Lightcap, the chief operating officer and one of CEO Sam Altman’s top deputies, is transitioning to a “special projects” role. “As I shared when I joined, I had a relapse of my neuroimmune condition a few weeks before starting the job,” Simo said in the note which was sent in OpenAI’s “core” Slack channel. Simo is expected to take “several weeks” of leave according to her internal post. In his new role, Lightcap will be in charge of the company’s forward-deployed engineers, which embed within enterprise organizations and help integrate OpenAI’s technology, among other duties.