OpenAI hires former Pebble Co-founder Gabor Cselle

OpenAI, led by Sam Altman, has brought on Gabor Cselle, the former CEO and co-founder of Pebble, a competitor to X (formerly Twitter), to contribute to a "secret project."

Cselle began collaborating with OpenAI in October, sharing on the X platform, “Excited to share that I've joined @OpenAI! The talent density here is incredible. Learning a lot already. Will share more about what I'm working on in due time.”

In 2022, he co-founded Pebble, initially named T2, alongside Michael Greer, former engineering head at Discord. The venture received backing from prominent investors, including Android co-founder Rich Miner.

However, Pebble announced its shutdown in 2023 after developing a small but engaged user base for its microblogging service. Subsequently, it re-emerged as a Mastodon instance under the name Pebble.social. At its height, Pebble boasted around 20,000 registered users, though daily active users dwindled to about 1,000 after rebranding.

Cselle remarked on the community's value, stating, “It’s good to see that the community finds value in this and that we had a real community on Pebble.” Earlier this year, he joined the accelerator South Park Commons.

Recent reports indicate that OpenAI is set to launch its next AI model, named ‘Orion,’ in December, which is expected to be significantly more powerful than GPT-4, potentially up to 100 times stronger.

According to The Verge, unlike the previous releases of OpenAI's models—GPT-4o and o1—Orion may not be made widely available through ChatGPT initially.

This anticipated launch comes as OpenAI is transitioning to a for-profit model, following a historic funding round that raised $6.6 billion at a valuation of $157 billion. Nevertheless, OpenAI has stated that there are currently no plans to launch Orion.