Gabor Cselle, known for his entrepreneurial and leadership experience in tech, has joined OpenAI to work on a new, undisclosed project. Cselle, whose LinkedIn profile indicates he began working at OpenAI in October, shared the news on X (formerly Twitter), hinting at exciting developments but withholding specific details.
Cselle is a seasoned founder with a history of significant exits. He sold his first company, reMail, to Google and later sold his second venture, Namo Media, to Twitter, where he also served as a group product manager for several years. His work at Twitter included overseeing the home timeline, user onboarding, and services for non-logged-in users. Cselle later moved to Google as a director at Area 120, its incubator for innovative projects.
In 2022, Cselle co-founded Pebble (initially called T2) with Michael Greer, former head of engineering at Discord. Pebble aimed to be a safer, moderated alternative to X/Twitter, fostering a small but dedicated community and securing investment from prominent figures like Android co-founder Rich Miner. Despite this, the platform faced growth challenges, shutting down in October 2023 and relaunching as a Mastodon instance in November.
Before joining OpenAI, Cselle spent time at the accelerator South Park Commons, where he developed various generative AI projects, including a tribute to the popular HQ Trivia.
Cselle’s move to OpenAI coincides with high-profile appointments at rival companies. Alex Rodrigues, founder of autonomous trucking firm Embark, announced he was joining OpenAI competitor Anthropic as an AI safety researcher, signaling a period of dynamic talent shifts within the AI sector.
