OpenAI’s AGI boss is taking a leave of absence

OpenAI is undergoing another round of C-suite changes, according to an internal memo viewed by The Verge.

OpenAI’s AGI boss is taking a leave of absence

In a memo, Fidji Simo says she will be on medical leave ‘for the next several weeks.’

Fidji Simo, OpenAI’s CEO of AGI deployment — who was until recently the company’s CEO of Applications — says in the memo that she will be stepping away on medical leave “for the next several weeks” due to a neuroimmune condition. While she’s out, OpenAI president Greg Brockman will be in charge of product, including leading OpenAI’s super app efforts. On the business side, CSO Jason Kwon, CFO Sarah Friar, and CRO Denise Dresser will take charge.

OpenAI’s CMO, Kate Rouch, has also decided to step down in order to focus on her health, according to Simo. Gary Briggs will temporarily step in to replace Rouch, reporting to Kwon, and the two of them, along with Rouch, will lead the search for her replacement. Rouch “plans to return to a different, more narrowly scoped role when her health allows,” Simo says.

Brad Lightcap, OpenAI’s COO, has also decided to step down from his role and transition into a new one “focused on special projects” and reporting to CEO Sam Altman, per the memo. Dresser will step in to take over much of his work, reporting to Simo, but two areas that Lightcap oversaw, government and “OpenAI for Countries,” will move into OpenAI’s strategy organization instead.

The news comes after a few months of public relations setbacks for the company. It sparked controversy both internally and externally after signing on to new terms of use with the Pentagon, and it had to drop Sora, its AI video generation tool, in order to devote compute and other resources to catching up with competitors in enterprise and coding tools. OpenAI’s chief communications officer, Hannah Wong, departed her post in January.

Just yesterday, OpenAI also announced it was purchasing viral online talk show TBPN, and Simo wrote in a memo about that announcement that the company wants to “help create a space for a real, constructive conversation about the changes AI creates.”

In a statement to The Verge, OpenAI spokesperson Elana Widmann said, “We 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. We’re well-positioned to keep executing with continuity and momentum.”