Open AI product and business leader Simo resigned due to illness and became a company consultant
OpenAI head of product and business Fidji Simo announced on Thursday that she will resign from her current position at the artificial intelligence company to focus on taking care of her body because a chronic disease she suffers from has recently worsened. Seamus was diagnosed with postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, or POTS, in 2019. She said that she spends a lot of time traveling to and from the hospital all year round, dealing with various illnesses, receiving treatment, and dealing with medical insurance-related matters for a long time. She also has to bear the unknown anxiety caused by the condition, as well as all the unknown trivial matters that a patient with a chronic disease needs to bear. Seamus took medical leave from OpenAI in April this year. During her departure, OpenAI president Greg Brockman took over product-related work. Simo posted on the X platform on Thursday: "When I applied for leave, many people said that I put my health first and was very brave. But the fact is that I have not made this decision until now. I have failed to make up my mind countless times before." Simo said she will transition to a part-time advisory role at OpenAI. OpenAI hired Simo in May 2025 to lead the company's applications business. At the time, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a memo that Seamus would "focus on driving the expansion of our 'traditional' company functions as we enter our next phase of growth." Last month, OpenAI filed confidentially for an IPO a week after rival Anthropic. However, the company has yet to announce a timetable for its listing, with reports suggesting the plan may be delayed until at least next year. Simo served as CEO of the fresh food e-commerce platform Instacart, pushing the company to go public and helping break the longest IPO gap for technology companies in thirty years. She also held executive roles at Meta for more than a decade and served as head of Facebook from 2019 to 2021. "Two years after I got sick, Facebook offered me a year of full-time medical leave. I turned it down without even a second thought," Seamus wrote on Thursday. She also said that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the time "told me to think long-term. I wish I had listened to his advice." OpenAI CEO Sam Altman posted on the