OpenAI Welcomes Former Pebble Co-Founder Gabor Cselle
OpenAI, led by Sam Altman, has announced the hiring of Gabor Cselle, the former CEO and Co-Founder of the now-defunct microblogging platform Pebble, to work on a confidential initiative. Cselle has been collaborating with OpenAI since October, expressing his enthusiasm on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter), where he stated, "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".
Cselle Co-Founded Pebble, initially named T2, in 2022 alongside Michael Greer, the former head of engineering at Discord. The platform received backing from notable venture capitalists, including Rich Miner, co-founder of Android. Despite gaining traction and fostering a dedicated community, Pebble announced its shutdown in 2023 after reaching a peak of 20,000 registered users, which dwindled to approximately 1,000 daily users post-rebranding as Pebble.social on the Mastodon network.
Reflecting on Pebble's community, Cselle remarked, "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". Following the closure of Pebble, he joined the accelerator South Park Commons in May.
In parallel to this hiring, OpenAI is preparing for the launch of its upcoming AI model, ‘Orion,’ projected for December. Reports suggest that Orion could be up to 100 times more powerful than its predecessor, GPT-4. However, OpenAI has indicated no immediate plans for a broad release of Orion, which comes amid a significant restructuring as the company transitions into a for-profit entity following a historic $6.6 billion funding round that valued it at $157 billion.