Safe Superintelligence (SSI), the AI startup co-founded by former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, has raised over $1 billion in capital from investors including NFDG (an investment partnership run by Nat Friedman and SSI’s CEO Daniel Gross), a16z, Sequoia, DST Global and SV Angel.
SSI told Reuters that it plans to use the tranche to acquire computing power and hire talent, with a focus on building a team of researchers and engineers split between Palo Alto and Tel Aviv. As to what exactly they’ll research (and who they might partner with), SSI isn’t saying — yet.
Reuters, citing a source familiar, says that the new funding values SSI at $5 billion.
Sutskever, who’s lead scientist at SSI, co-launched the company earlier this year with Friedman and Daniel Levy, another ex-OpenAI researcher. Prior to SSI, Sutskever headed the now-dismantled Superalignment team at OpenAI, which focused on general safety research.
Sutskever quietly departed OpenAI months after a highly-publicized fallout between him, several former OpenAI board members and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman over what Sutskever has referred to as a “breakdown in communications.”