When Fidji Simo announced she was leaving her role as one of the most senior members of OpenAI’s leadership team after a seven-year battle with her chronic illness, Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome, or POTS, the news felt unexpectedly personal. My little cousin has POTS, and it’s been devastating to witness. Simo’s post said she would be focusing on how to use AI to cure these types of diseases, but I wondered if it was just another tech executive making lofty promises about AI that may never materialize.
“Do people like my cousin have any reason to have hope that AI can actually make a difference for their health?” I asked Simo when I reached out to her after the announcement. I also told her how much I admired her courage to be so open about her condition. That’s not easy for a highly scrutinized public figure. Simo was previously at Meta for a decade, where she oversaw the Facebook app, and then served as CEO of Instacart, which she brought public in 2023, before joining OpenAI in 2025.
“Yes,” she answered. “I created a company, ChronicleBio, to tackle just that.”
We hopped on the phone to chat about it in Simo’s first interview since leaving her position as OpenAI’s CEO of AGI deployment, where she reported directly to CEO Sam Altman. While now her main focus is her recovery and a never-ending schedule of medical appointments, she’s also working on growing ChronicleBio as well as continuing to advise OpenAI. She’s still in a Slack channel with the company’s leadership team, where she regularly speaks with Altman, and Greg Brockman, the OpenAI cofounder and president who took over the bulk of Simo’s responsibilities when she departed.
