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OpenAI announced a major reorganization on Friday as the company\u2019s CEO of AGI deployment, Fidji Simo, takes medical leave to focus on her health. OpenAI president Greg Brockman will handle the product teams in Simo\u2019s absence. Simo\u2019s previous title was CEO of applications.<\/p>\n
Brad Lightcap, the chief operating officer and one of CEO Sam Altman\u2019s top deputies, is transitioning to a \u201cspecial projects\u201d role. Kate Rouch, the chief marketing officer, is taking a leave of absence to focus on her health. Rouch has been undergoing treatment for breast cancer. When she returns, it will be in \u201ca different, more narrowly scoped role,\u201d according to a note Simo shared with OpenAI staff which was viewed by WIRED.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs I shared when I joined, I had a relapse of my neuroimmune condition a few weeks before starting the job,\u201d Simo said in the note which was sent in OpenAI\u2019s \u201ccore\u201d Slack channel. \u201cIt\u2019s been a bit of a rollercoaster since, and the last month has been particularly rough health-wise. For my entire time here, I\u2019ve postponed medical tests and new therapies to stay completely focused on the job and not miss a single day of work. I took time off for the first time two weeks before the break for some medical tests, and it's now clear that I\u2019ve pushed a little too far and I really need to try new interventions to stabilize my health.\u201d<\/p>\n
Simo is expected to take \u201cseveral weeks\u201d of leave according to her internal post.<\/p>\n
In his new role, Lightcap will be in charge of the company\u2019s forward-deployed engineers, which embed within enterprise organizations and help integrate OpenAI\u2019s technology, among other duties.<\/p>\n
OpenAI will begin searching for a new CMO, Simo said. The company is also looking for a chief communications officer to replace Hannah Wong, who left her position in January. Chris Lehane has taken over as the leader of the communications team in the interim.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a strong leadership team focused on our biggest priorities: advancing frontier research, growing our global user base of nearly 1 billion users, and powering enterprise use cases,\u201d said an OpenAI spokesperson in a statement. \u201cWe're well-positioned to keep executing with continuity and momentum.\u201d<\/p>\n
Simo joined OpenAI in August 2025, where she took over many of the company\u2019s consumer-facing products, including ChatGPT, Codex, and the social-video app Sora. She recently shuttered the Sora app and told staff that the company needed to cut side projects and refocus around its core products.<\/p>\n
The decision comes as OpenAI eyes an IPO as soon as this year. The company recently raised $122 billion in the largest funding round the tech industry has ever seen, which valued the company at $852 billion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Save StorySave this storySave StorySave this story OpenAI announced a major reorganization on Friday as the company\u2019s CEO of AGI deployment, Fidji Simo, takes medical leave to focus on her health. OpenAI president Greg Brockman will handle the product teams in Simo\u2019s absence. Simo\u2019s previous title was CEO of applications. Brad Lightcap, the chief operating […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48643,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-48642","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48642\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}