OpenAI Co-Founder Sutskever's New Safety-Focused AI Startup SSI Raises $1 billion
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SSI, which currently has 10 employees, plans to use the funds to acquire computing power and hire top talent.
Safe Superintelligence (SSI), newly co-founded by OpenAI's former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, has raised $1 billion in cash to help develop safe artificial intelligence systems that far surpass human capabilities, company executives told Reuters.
SSI, which currently has 10 employees, plans to use the funds to acquire computing power and hire top talent. It will focus on building a small highly trusted team of researchers and engineers split between Palo Alto, California and Tel Aviv, Israel.
The company declined to share its valuation but sources close to the matter said it was valued at $5 billion. The funding underlines how some investors are still willing to make outsized bets on exceptional talent focused on foundational AI research. That's despite a general waning in interest towards funding such companies which can be unprofitable for some time, and which has caused several startup founders to leave their posts for tech giants.
