Former CEO and co-founder of Pebble, Gabor Cselle, has recently joined OpenAI to work on an undisclosed project. Although he started with OpenAI in October, Cselle only shared the news yesterday in a post on X, formerly Twitter, hinting at exciting work ahead.
Cselle is known as a repeat entrepreneur with a background in technology and product management. His first startup, a mobile email platform called reMail, was acquired by Google. His second venture, Namo Media, which specialized in native advertising, was sold to Twitter. Before Elon Musk's acquisition and rebranding of Twitter as X, Cselle served as a group product manager at Twitter, focusing on features such as the home timeline and user onboarding. After his time at Twitter, he returned to Google, working as a director at Area 120, Google’s incubator for experimental projects.
In 2022, Cselle co-founded Pebble, initially named T2, with Michael Greer, the former engineering lead at Discord. Pebble emphasized creating a safe and well-moderated online community. Despite some early interest and funding from angel investors, including Android co-founder Rich Miner, Pebble struggled with growth and ultimately closed last October. Later, it re-launched as part of Mastodon, an open-source social platform.
After Pebble, Cselle joined the South Park Commons accelerator, where he explored several generative AI concepts, including a prototype inspired by the popular HQ Trivia app. His recent move to OpenAI aligns with his growing focus on AI technologies.
Cselle’s transition to OpenAI coincides with a similar high-profile hire by OpenAI competitor, Anthropic. Alex Rodrigues, founder of the autonomous trucking company Embark, recently joined Anthropic as an AI safety researcher.
