Pei, who served as the public face of the Chinese smartphone maker OnePlus for years, surprised many when he announced in October that he would be leaving the company. “We plan on moving aggressively against our vision, and can’t wait to see how the market will react.” “I am deeply grateful and tremendously excited to have friends of this caliber supporting us in building what’s next,” said Carl Pei in a statement. Pei said he plans to use the fresh capital to set up an office in London, hire talent and fund product research and development. A source familiar with the matter told TechCrunch that the venture will focus on audio-related hardware - at least to begin with. Pei remains tight-lipped on what this new venture would be about, or what it is even called, but said he would talk more about it early next year.

The Swedish tech entrepreneur said on Wednesday he had secured $7 million in a seed financing round from friends and private investors, including Tony Fadell (principal at Future Shape and inventor of the iPod), well-known YouTuber Casey Neistat, Kevin Lin (co-founder of Twitch), Steve Huffman (chief executive of Reddit), Liam Casey (founder and chief executive of PCH), Paddy Cosgrave (founder of Web Summit) Josh Buckley (chief executive of Product Hunt) and a group of former and current Stockholm-headquartered Truecaller employees: Kim Fai Kok, Nick Dahl and Zakaria Hersi.

Carl Pei, the co-founder of OnePlus who left the company two months ago, has raised $7 million from a roster of high-profile investors for his new hardware venture.

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