OpenAI, run by Sam Altman, has hired Gabor Cassel, former CEO and co-founder 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 density of talent here is amazing. Already learning a lot. I will share more about what I am working on in due course,” he posted on the X social media platform.
He began working on Pebble, originally called T2, in 2022 with Michael Greer, Discord’s former head of engineering. Pebble raised funding from venture capitalists, including Android co-founder Rich Minor.
In 2023, Pebble announced the closure. It had grown into a small but engaged community on its microblogging service.
Later, Pebble returned as a Mastodon instance in the form of Pebble.social, according to reports. At its peak, Pebble reached 20,000 registered users but after its rebranding from T2 its usage dropped to around 1,000 daily users.
“I think it’s good to see that the community values this and that we had a real community on Pebble,” Cassel was quoted as saying. In May of 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 100 times more powerful than GPT-4.
