OpenAI hires former Pebble CEO Gabor Cselle for 'secret project'

Sam Altman-run OpenAI has hired Gabor Cselle, former chief executive and cofounder of X (formerly Twitter) rival Pebble, to work on a "secret project".

Cselle has been working with OpenAI since October. "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," he posted on X social media platform.



He started working on Pebble, originally called T2, in 2022 with Michael Greer, ex-engineering head at Discord. Pebble raised funding from venture capitalists, including Android co-founder Rich Miner.

In 2023, Pebble announced its shutdown. It had grown into a small but engaged community on its microblogging service.

Later, Pebble returned as a Mastodon instance as Pebble.social, according to reports. At its peak, Pebble reached 20,000 registered users but its usage had fallen to just around 1,000 daily users following its rebranding from T2.

"I think it's good to see that the community finds value in this and that's that we had a real community on Pebble," Cselle was quoted as saying in reports. In May this year, he joined the accelerator South Park Commons.

Last month, reports surfaced that ChatGPT maker OpenAI is planning to launch its next AI model called 'Orion' in December this year which is potentially up to 100 times more powerful than GPT-4.

According to a report in The Verge, unlike the release of OpenAI's last two models - GPT-4o and o1 - Orion won't initially be released widely through ChatGPT.

The expected release of Orion comes as OpenAI, which has secured a historic $6.6 billion funding at a $157 billion valuation, is restructuring itself as a for-profit entity.

OpenAI, however, has said it has no plans to launch Orion as of now.