OpenAI is tightening its inner circle as co-founder Greg Brockman seizes control of the company's most profitable products ahead of a historic IPO, positioning a handful of elites to cash out billions while the technology that will displace American workers remains locked in their grip.
With applications chief Fidji Simo stepping down due to chronic illness, Brockman now oversees ChatGPT, the enterprise teams, and compute initiatives. The company will not hire a replacement. This consolidation means the AI shaping the future of the American workforce will be steered by an even smaller club of insiders desperate to justify an $852 billion valuation before they cash in on Wall Street.
Simo announced her resignation Thursday, revealing she has lived with Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS) for seven years. Business Insider reported that Simo regretted ignoring advice from Mark Zuckerberg years ago to "play the long game" and take a full year of medical leave while at Facebook. "Looking back, I realize that a lot of what made me successful also made this decision incredibly difficult," Simo wrote. She transitions to a part-time advisory role.
Her exit leaves a vacuum, and Brockman is filling it. CNBC reported that Brockman, who took over product responsibilities during Simo’s medical leave in April, will now permanently lead those efforts. He and CEO Sam Altman are consolidating power. "Greg and I are partners in running this company," Altman wrote in a blog post following his brief 2023 ouster, which Brockman quit in solidarity over. "We have never quite figured out how to communicate that on the org chart, but we will." They figured it out: eliminate the middleman.
The power grab comes as OpenAI faces immense pressure to justify its staggering $852 billion valuation ahead of an expected IPO. The company confidentially filed its prospectus with regulators in June but is reportedly delaying the debut until next year. They need revenue, and they need it fast. ChatGPT’s market share fell below 50% for the first time in March, squeezed by competition from Anthropic, Google, Elon Musk’s ventures, and cheaper open-weight models out of China.
This consolidation also follows a high-profile legal brawl with Musk, who sued Altman and Brockman for abandoning their commitments to keep the AI lab a nonprofit. Musk lost the case on a technicality—an advisory jury said he waited too long to sue. In court, Brockman was grilled on his personal financial ambitions but insisted from the witness stand, "This is going to be the most important technological shift in human history."
It is a shift controlled by an ever-smaller circle. Altman and Brockman survived a board coup and a lawsuit, and now they are clearing the org chart to run the most consequential technology of our time as a two-man show. The IPO will make them billionaires. The question is what it will cost the rest of us.