As most of you know by now, Carl Pei left OnePlus in October, and now he announced his next business venture. Carl Pei is a co-founder of OnePlus, along with Pete Lau, which is why his departure shook up the mobile world.
Carl Pei took some time to relax and get things in order for his next business venture, which he just announced. He is getting into the audio business, it seems. The information has been shared by Wired.
Mr. Pei is launching an audio-related company, and new products are coming next year. He has signed up Tony Fadell as his investor. For those of you who do not know, Mr. Fadell is a principal at advisory firm Future Shape, and the inventor of the iPod.
He said that there was no falling out with Pete Lau, as many people guessed. Mr. Pei had the urge to explore something new, which is why he left OnePlus. He still talks with Pete Lau on a regular basis.
Carl Pei announces his next venture after leaving OnePlus back in October
Pete Lau found out about Carl Pei’s departure in a cafe, and was upset at first, but he quickly said he’ll support Carl Pei. Mr. Pei basically said that he wants to turn a blank page, even though he enjoyed his time at OnePlus very much.
Carl Pei was a part of the leadership team for the creation of the OnePlus Bullets earphones. He seems to be very invested in audio, so it’s not entirely surprising that he’s moving forward with an audio-related company. Many people expected a new smartphone company, though, but that won’t happen, it seems.
He refused to confirm that a new pair of headphones are coming, though. He said that we can expect much more than that from this new company. We can guess all we want, but we won’t know until it actually happens.
This new company will be based in London, by the way. Carl Pei managed to raise $7 million before going for Series A funding. Tony Fadell is not the only person who invested in Carl Pei’s company.
The co-founder and CEO of Reddit, Steve Huffman, did the same. The same goes for Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin, and Product Hunt CEO Josh Buckley. The same goes for Casey Neistat, the millionaire Vlogger, YouTube, and co-founder of Beme.
Mr. Pei is still actively recruiting, but at the time, the company consists out of less than ten people. We’ll learn more about it soon.