Who is behind opencode - Big Pickle and Zen25.09.26

OpenCode is made by Anomaly — an open-source developer-tools company. The picture:
The company
- Anomaly (formerly linked to the SST ecosystem; website theanomaly.xyz, they also built sst.dev, opennext.js.org, openauth.js.org, models.dev). Toronto/Canada + San Francisco.
- Founded ~2008 by Jay V (Jay, CEO) and Frank Wang (CTO), who met at University of Waterloo. Earlier company SST (Serverless Stack) went through Y Combinator (Winter 2021), raised ~$1M seed, became profitable — that's where opencode's lineage comes from.
OpenCode specifics
- Fully open source (MIT) — github.com/anomalyco/opencode, ~205K stars, 950+ contributors, "no code or context stored" privacy pitch, runs locally on your machine.
- Monetization is not the client — it's OpenCode Zen: a hosted model gateway (where Big Pickle, the free stealth model you're using now, lives). The client is free/open; Zen is the service that sells/curates model access.
So the chain is: OpenCode (MIT, by Anomaly/SST founders) → Zen gateway → Big Pickle (stealth model).
Noteworthy for you: this whole tool is Toronto/WC-founded, MIT-licensed, and built around letting you BYO model — which is exactly the "run it yourself" / local-model path you were exploring with hello_llm_translate.

Jay V (Jay, @jayair)
- CEO of Anomaly, the company behind OpenCode. Self-described as more involved in product/design than a typical CEO — "every major decision crosses his desk."
- University of Waterloo alum; met Frank Wang in their first week there (~2003).
- Founded Anomaly (~2008), then SST (Serverless Stack, 2017), Seed.run (2017), and co-organized the Functions Conference (Toronto, 2018). OpenCode launched 2025.
- Investors in his circle include Reid Hoffman, Max Levchin, Steve Chen, SV Angel, and Y Combinator; went through YC (Winter 2021) — after "more than a decade and nine applications."
Frank Wang (@fanjiewang / GitHub fwang)
- CTO of Anomaly / OpenCode; source of the key architectural bet: making OpenCode model-agnostic from day one ("swap out AI providers like changing batteries").
- Also Waterloo (BASc Computer Engineering 2003–2008), then worked at NVIDIA (2005–2007, engineer), founded Anomaly/SST/Seed.run alongside Jay.
- Background elsewhere is thin in sources; the founder-funding profile lists "Erlang, Node.js, Azure/AWS, DevOps" skills.
Together they run a quartet of co-founders — Jay (CEO), Frank (CTO), Dax Raad (joined 2021, early SST user, the public-facing one), and Adam Elmore (AWS Hero, joined at OpenCode launch).

Anonymous

Who is behind opencode - Big Pickle and Zen25.09.26

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