OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever raises $1.5b for Safe Superintelligence
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The news: Safe Superintelligence (SSI), co-founded by OpenAI’s former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, has raised USD1 billion ($1.49 billion) to develop advanced AI beyond human limits but aligned with human values, Reuters reported.
The numbers: The firm, split between Palo Alto and Tel Aviv, aims to build a small, highly trusted team of researchers and is valued at around USD5 billion, the publication said, citing unnamed sources familiar with the valuation.
Sutskever co-founded SSI in June alongside Daniel Gross, who formerly led AI projects at Apple, and Daniel Levy, a former OpenAI researcher. Its mission is to create AI that surpasses human intelligence but is safe and aligned with human values.
Investors participating in the founding round include Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, DST Global, SV Angel and NFDG, an investment partnership run by former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman and Gross, SSI said on its website.
The context: After a fallout at OpenAI, where Sutskever initially supported CEO Sam Altman’s removal but later reversed course, Sutskever left the company in May.
Unlike OpenAI’s complex corporate structure, SSI operates as a traditional for-profit business.
What they said: In an interview with Reuters, Gross said SSI was looking for investors, partners and employees that are aligned with its mission.
"It's important for us to be surrounded by investors who understand, respect and support our mission, which is to make a straight shot to safe superintelligence and in particular to spend a couple of years doing R&D on our product before bringing it to market," he said.
The firm is exploring cloud partnerships for computing power but has not finalised partners yet, Gross added.
The sources: Reuters, Safe Superintelligence website
