OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei has left the company to work on a new venture, according to a report by TechCrunch.
Pei has not announced the move officially, but persons familiar with the decision said he will not be joining Samsung, a company seen as a model for his own. He is also said to be raising capital for the new venture, which has not been announced.
Pei founded OnePlus with Pete Lau in 2013. Pei originally manufactured white-label MP3 players in Shenzhen, China, before taking on the mobile phone space.
Pei originally worked at Oppo, another niche phone company dedicated to unique Android devices, and once wrote he wanted to work at Samsung to further understand global sales and logistics.
OnePlus, partly financed by Oppo, sells flagship Android phones with unique, community-driven features. For example, their first phone, OnePlus One, ran Cyanogen, an Android variant popular with phone modders. They sold their first phones in April 2014.
Most recently, the company released the OnePlus Nord and the company used clever marketing tactics to grow from Asia into Europe and the United States.
Pei was the most visible face of the company at trade shows and in interviews.
We’ve reached out for further comment.
