PewDiePie says OpenAI suspended him twice while he built his Ajax AI model
In brief
- PewDiePie (Felix Kjellberg) released Ajax, his own AI model, around October 1-2, 2026.
- OpenAI suspended his account twice while he was developing Ajax, Kjellberg says.
- Distillation of OpenAI model outputs was OpenAI's stated reason, according to Kjellberg.
- Ajax is reportedly a 9-billion-parameter fine-tune of Alibaba's Qwen3.5-9B base model.
- No public model card, benchmarks, license or download link exists yet.
What Kjellberg says happened
Kjellberg's account, as reported by Crypto Briefing, is that OpenAI suspended his account on two separate occasions while he was developing Ajax. He says the stated reason was distillation. That's the practice of feeding a powerful model's answers into a smaller model as training material.
Per the report, the allegation centered on outputs from OpenAI models (including one referred to as "Sol") being used to generate training data for Ajax. OpenAI's response isn't part of the reporting, and nothing here establishes that Kjellberg broke OpenAI's terms. It's his version of events.
Crypto Briefing put it this way: if accurate, Kjellberg's account shows OpenAI's terms being enforced against a high-profile individual developer, not just a rival company.
For now, only one side has spoken.
What Ajax is
Ajax is a 9-billion-parameter model, described as a small, uncensored assistant that runs on a user's own computer rather than a remote server. Kjellberg didn't build it from scratch. Crypto Briefing reported that it's a fine-tuned version of Alibaba's Qwen3.5-9B base model.
According to the same report, Ajax is meant to work as an autonomous agent and assistant inside Odysseus (a self-hosted workspace Kjellberg launched in May 2026), handling web searches, email management, calendar duties and to-do lists on consumer hardware. The report also says Ajax leans on a tool called Heretic for "abliteration," a technique for removing a model's tendency to refuse requests.
What isn't verified yet
As of early October, Ajax had no public model card, no published benchmarks, no confirmed weights license and no immediate download link. That means its capabilities can't be independently checked yet, whether it's the agent features or the claim that it all runs on consumer hardware. Until those pieces ship, what readers have is Kjellberg's description and Crypto Briefing's reporting, and that's it.
Frequently asked questions
Why does PewDiePie say OpenAI suspended his account?
Kjellberg says OpenAI suspended his account twice while he was developing Ajax, and that the stated reason was distillation, according to Crypto Briefing. Distillation is the practice of feeding a powerful model's answers into a smaller model as training material. OpenAI's side of the account isn't reported.
What is the Ajax AI model built on?
Crypto Briefing reported that Ajax isn't built from scratch. It's a 9-billion-parameter fine-tuned version of Alibaba's Qwen3.5-9B base model. The report says it uses a tool called Heretic for abliteration, a technique for removing a model's tendency to refuse requests.
Can you download Ajax yet?
Not as of early October 2026. Ajax had no public model card, no published benchmarks, no confirmed weights license and no immediate download link at that point, so its capabilities haven't been independently verified.
