Safe Superintelligence Inc. (SSI), a US-based newly co-founded company by OpenAI’s former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, has announced that it raised $1B (approximately €902.1M) in funding.
The investment was led by NFDG, an investment partnership by Nat Friedman and SSI’s CEO Daniel Gross. The round also saw participation from a16z (Andreessen Horowitz), Sequoia Capital, DST Global and SV Angel.
According to Reuters, the new funding values SSI at $5B. The company plans to use the funds to acquire computing power and hire researchers and engineers across Palo Alto and Tel Aviv.
Developing ‘Safe Superintelligence’
Ilya Sutskever, a key figure in AI, co-founded SSI with Daniel Gross and Daniel Levy. Sutskever is SSI’s chief scientist, Gross oversees computing power and fundraising, and Levy serves as principal scientist.
SSI aims to solve what it calls “the most important technical problem of our time” — the creation of a safe superintelligence.
Sutskever launched SSI to tackle a new challenge after leaving OpenAI. The company operates as a traditional for-profit entity, prioritising character and talent over formal qualifications in its hiring.
As the world’s first lab exclusively focused on this mission, SSI has set a single goal: to build a superintelligence that is both highly capable and inherently safe. This allows the company to “scale in peace”, free from the distractions of management overhead or the pressures of product cycles.
“Our mission, name, and entire product roadmap are aligned toward achieving safe superintelligence,” the company stated. “We approach safety and capabilities in tandem, solving them as technical challenges through revolutionary engineering and scientific breakthroughs.”
“We aim to advance capabilities as quickly as possible while ensuring our safety measures remain ahead,” adds the company.
According to Reuters, SSI plans to partner with cloud providers and chip companies for its computing power needs but hasn’t chosen specific firms yet.
Reportedly, Sutskever indicated that he will approach scaling differently and without revealing specifics. He questioned the common focus on the “scaling hypothesis”, asking, “What are we scaling?”
Sutskever emphasised that while some may work hard to accelerate down the same path, SSI’s approach is to do something different, which he believes opens the door to achieving “something special”.