Former OpenAI Executive’s New Company SSI Raises $1 Billion

It’s been an interesting journey for Ilya Sutskever since he left OpenAI, the leader of the generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) sector, at the same time as Jan Leike, his co-lead in OpenAI’s Superalignment endeavor.

Soon after, Leike announced that he had joined Anthropic, while Sutskever revealed he was working on “a project that is very personally meaningful to me about which I will share details in due time.”

That project came in the form of a new AI company called Safe Superintelligence Inc. (SSI), where he would continue with what he did at his former employer; help develop safe AI (artificial intelligence) systems that are smarter than humans.

Now, the company has received its next major boost, one that will help it compete at the top level.

So, what did SSI announce and how will it help the company? Let’s explore!
 

What’s New With Safe Superintelligence Inc?

 

• As per an update posted on Safe Superintelligence Inc.’s modest website, the company announced that it had a fruitful funding round as it raised $1 billion in cash.

• While the company didn’t reveal its valuation post the funding round, sources familiar with the company said it was valued at $5 billion.

• The company’s funding round was joined by top venture capital firms that included NFDG, a16z (Andreessen Horowitz), Sequoia Capital, DST Global and SV Angel.

• NFDG is a venture capital firm that’s operated by Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross, the CEO of SSI who also worked at Apple leading their AI initiatives.

• Joining Sutskever and Gross is Daniel Levy, who is a former OpenAI researcher.

• At SSI, Levy holds the position of Principal Scientist, Sutskever is Chief Scientist and Gross in in charge of sourcing computing power and fundraising.

• The move comes as the AI industry faced a drop in the stock market where shares of NVIDIA dropped nearly 10% and wiped out almost $300 billion from its valuation, an unusual fluctuation in its otherwise rapid upward climb.

• The drop in value affected other companies such as AMD, Intel, Broadcom, Qualcomm and others too.

 

What Did Safe Superintelligence Inc Say About Its Funding Round?

 

• “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,” said SSI’s Daniel Gross on the company’s funding round.

• As per the company’s leaders, the funds raised by the company will be used to acquire computing power and grow its employee base with top talent.

• The company, which currently has 10 employees, is aiming to build a small but highly trusted team of researchers and engineers to work at its Palo Alto (California) and Tel Aviv (Israel) offices.

• One of the main criteria for hiring at SSI is that the executives ensure candidates fit in well with its culture.

• According to Gross, the company spends a considerable amount of time vetting if candidates have “good character”, as the company looks for people with extraordinary capabilities instead of focusing on credentials and experience.

• “One thing that excites us is when you find people that are interested in the work, that are not interested in the scene, in the hype,” Gross added.

• Ahead of this, SSI conveyed it has plans to partner with cloud providers and chip companies to cover its infrastructure needs, however, the company hasn’t yet picked who it intends to partner with.

• This decision plays an even more important role as Sutskever has long been a supporter of scaling, a hypothesis that AI models would perform better with access to vast amounts of computing power.

• The idea played a vital role in shaping generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, leading to immense investments in chips, data centers and energy.

• However, Sutskever said his approach to scaling will be different at SSI than it was at OpenAI, however, didn’t share any details.

• Sutskever said, “Everyone just says scaling hypothesis. Everyone neglects to ask, what are we scaling?”

Do you think SSI’s success in its funding round will help it challenge generative AI leaders OpenAI, Microsoft and other AI companies? Do you think other AI companies need to step up their AI safety efforts?

Let us know in the comments below!