Instacart CEO Fiji Simo speaks in an interview on Bloomberg Studio 1.0 on Thursday, March 3, 2022 in San Francisco, California.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Fiji Simo, OpenAI’s head of product and business, announced Thursday that he is stepping down from his role at the artificial intelligence company to focus on recovering from a “severe exacerbation of a chronic disease.”
Simo was diagnosed with Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS) in 2019 and said she spends “countless hours in the doctor’s office, dealing with symptoms, treatments, insurance, anxiety, and all the invisible tasks that come with being a patient.”
She retired from OpenAI in April due to illness. OpenAI President Greg Brockman took over product responsibility in Simo’s absence.
“When I went on vacation, many people told me I was brave for prioritizing my health,” Simo posted on Thursday’s X. “The truth is, I only made this decision now because I have failed so many times in the past.”
Simo said he plans to transition into a role as a part-time advisor to OpenAI.
OpenAI hired Simo in May 2025 to lead the company’s applications business. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a memo at the time that Simo is “focused on enabling the company to scale ‘traditional’ enterprise capabilities as it enters its next phase of growth.”
Last month, OpenAI secretly filed for an IPO, followed a week later by rival Anthropic. However, the company has not provided a timeline for its public market debut, and those plans have reportedly been delayed until at least next year.
Mr. Simo previously instacartThere, she took the company public and helped break the longest tech IPO drought in 30 years. She also held leadership roles at Meta for more than a decade and served as head of Facebook from 2019 to 2021.
“Two years after getting sick, Facebook offered me the opportunity to take a full year of medical leave. I didn’t even stop and consider it. I immediately said no,” Simo wrote on Thursday. He added that CEO Mark Zuckerberg “said we had to play the long game. I wish I had listened.”
In a post on X, Altman said he was grateful for Simo’s contributions to the company and “also grateful for her friendship and who she is as a person.”
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