Fidji Simo 卸任 OpenAI 二号职位

Fidji Simo，OpenAI 的二号高管，将卸任全职职务，《华尔街日报》报道。

周四，Simo 在一份内部备忘录中表示，她持续的病假比预期更长、更艰难，因此将转为兼职顾问角色。Simo 于 2024 年加入 OpenAI 董事会，并于 2025 年 5 月加入 OpenAI 担任应用 CEO（CEO of Applications），这是一个新设职位，直接向 Sam Altman 汇报，整合了公司的业务和产品运营。

这一调整被纳入更广泛的汇报关系变动：COO Brad Lightcap、CFO Sarah Friar 与 CPO Kevin Weil 均开始向她汇报，而 Altman 则退后一步，专注研究、算力和安全工作。

Simo 首次披露健康问题是在今年 4 月，当时她宣布因神经免疫性疾病复发而休医疗假；正是在同一份备忘录中公开了 Lightcap 转任新的“特殊项目”角色，以及 CMO Kate Rouch 离开公司专注于癌症康复。Weil 此后也离开了公司。

Simo 是从 Instacart 加入 OpenAI 的，自 2021 年起担任 Instacart 首席执行官并带领公司在 2023 年上市，此前她在 Meta 工作了十余年，包括掌管 Facebook 应用。

Simo 决定长期退出，让 Altman 不得不在 OpenAI 自身正酝酿 IPO 并追赶与企业级对手 Anthropic 差距的当口寻找接替者。她曾被广泛视为 OpenAI 上市后承担更多职责的热门人选，这使得眼下出现了真正的权力真空。

Simo 的主要精力原本放在壮大 OpenAI 消费者业务上。但 ChatGPT 的增长在去年末降温，未能达成内部收入目标，迫使公司更大力押注编程工具，而这一领域迄今乃至当前仍落后于 Anthropic。

TechCrunch 已联系 OpenAI 寻求更多信息。

从外部来看，对于一家最新估值达 8520 亿美元的公司而言，OpenAI 的高管团队显得较为单薄。除 Altman、Lightcap、Friar 及联合创始人 Greg Brockman（公司总裁，在 Simo 休假期间负责产品策略）外，其高管阵容还包括 Denise Dresser，她于 12 月加入公司担任首席收入官，据当时新闻稿称，负责监督“全球企业及客户成功收入战略”。

鉴于 Dresser 此前担任了两年 Slack 的 CEO，更早前在 Slack 母公司 Salesforce 工作了 14 年，如果她承担更广泛的职责，也不足为奇。

Simo 的离职还有一个值得了解的背景，即 OpenAI 对员工股权激励方法的转变。去年 4 月，即 Simo 加入的同一个月，公司将新员工股票授予的归属悬崖期（等待开始归属的期限）从行业标准的 12 个月缩短为 6 个月。随后在 12 月，OpenAI 完全取消了新员工的归属悬崖，让股权从入职第一天便开始归属。

该举措被 Simo 内部描述为让员工敢于“冒险”而无需担心因过早被解雇而失去股权，背景是不断升级的 AI 人才争夺战，也反映出 OpenAI 在为留住人才而大手笔投入。公司预计仅在 2025 年就将花费 60 亿美元用于股票薪酬。

上述离职均似乎与薪酬无关。高管的股权薪酬包通常单独协商，并可能有完全不同的归属条款。

Fidji Simo, OpenAI’s No. 2 executive, is stepping down from her full-time role, the Wall Street Journal reports.

In a staff note Thursday, Simo said her ongoing medical leave has proven longer and harder than expected, and that she’ll transition to a part-time advisory role instead. Simo joined OpenAI’s board of directors in 2024 and joined OpenAI in May 2025 as CEO of Applications, then a newly created role reporting directly to Sam Altman that consolidated the company’s business and product operations.

That move was integrated into a wider reporting shift: COO Brad Lightcap, CFO Sarah Friar, and CPO Kevin Weil all began reporting to her, while Altman stepped back to focus on research, compute, and safety.

Simo first disclosed her health issues in April, when she announced she was taking medical leave for a relapse of a neuroimmune condition; it was in that same memo that it was share publicly that Lightcap moved into a new “special projects” role and CMO Kate Rouch was leaving the company to focus on cancer recovery. Weil has since left the company, too.

Simo came to OpenAI from Instacart, where she’d been CEO since 2021 and led the company through its 2023 IPO, and before that spent over a decade at Meta, including running the Facebook app.

Simo’s decision to step back permanently leaves Altman searching for a successor right as OpenAI itself eyes a possible IPO and races to close the enterprise distance with Anthropic. She’d been widely seen as a likely candidate to take on even more responsibility once OpenAI went public, making this a real vacuum for him to address.

Simo was primarily focused on growing OpenAI’s consumer business. But ChatGPT’s growth cooled late last year, missing internal revenue targets, pushing the company to lean harder into coding tools instead, an area where it has been and continues, for now, to trail Anthropic.

TechCrunch has reached out to OpenAI for more information.

OpenAI’s executive ranks appear from the outside to be on the thin side for a company that was most recently assigned an $852 billion valuation. In addition to Altman, Lightcap, Friar, and co-founder Greg Brockman (who is also the company’s president and was overseeing product strategy while Simo was out), its bench includes Denise Dresser, who in December joined as the company’s chief revenue officer, overseeing its “global revenue strategy across enterprise and customer success,” per a release at the time.

It wouldn’t be shocking to see Dresser take on a more expansive role, given she previously spent two years as the CEO of Slack and, before that, spent 14 years with Slack’s parent company, Salesforce.

Simo’s departure come against another backdrop worth understanding, which is OpenAI’s shifting approach to employee equity. In April of last year, the same month that Simo joined, the company shortened its vesting cliff — the waiting period before new hires’ stock grants begin vesting — from the industry-standard 12 months to 6 months. Then in December, OpenAI eliminated the cliff altogether for new hires, letting equity start vesting from day one.

The move, described internally by Simo as a way to let employees “take risks” without fear of losing equity if let go early, came amid an escalating AI talent war and reflects just how aggressively OpenAI has been spending to retain staff. The company was projected to spend $6 billion on stock-based compensation in 2025 alone.

None of the aforementioned exits appear tied to compensation. Senior executives’ executive equity packages are typically negotiated individually and could have entirely different vesting terms.