Ex-OpenAI staffer’s new Safe Superintelligence raises $1bn for expansion

Safe Superintelligence (SSI), OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever’s startup, has raised $1 billion from investors to expand its business, including building “safe AI models.”

The three-month-old business currently has no product but is now valued at about $5 billion according to a source familiar with the matter, cited by Reuters . This comes after the company attracted the attention of some of the biggest venture capitalists in Silicon Valley, including Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, DST Global, and SV Angel NFDG.

Safe Superintelligence wants to attract new talent

The startup, which currently has 10 staff members will reportedly spend the money in investing in computing resources to develop its models as well as attract highly skilled talent required to build the business and make it competitive in the AI sector. The team will comprise researchers and engineers split between California, Palo Alto and Tel Aviv in Israel.

Sutskever, who was a chief scientist at OpenAI co-founded SSI in June this year with another former OpenAI staffer and researcher Daniel Levy, together with Apple’s former lead and Cue co-founder Daniel Gross.

“We’ve identified a new mountain to climb that’s a bit different from what I was working on previously,” Sutskever told the Financial Times.

“We’re not trying to go down the same path faster. If you do something different, then it becomes possible for you to do something special.”

– Sutskever.

Ilya also took to X to celebrate and acknowledge the development as well as the challenge before him and his newly established firm with a caption: “Mountain: identified. Time to climb.”

SSI looks to compete with established firms

SSI is reportedly building cutting-edge AI models aimed at challenging the already established firms, among them Sutskever’s former employer OpenAI, Elon Musk’s xAI, and Anthropic.

This comes as competition in the AI sector is intensifying with firms constantly upgrading their models while others launch new products to stay ahead and gain competitive advantage.

OpenAI is reportedly in negotiations with investors to raise billions of dollars at a valuation of more than $100 billion, while peers Anthropic and xAI were valued at nearly $20 billion each in funding rounds earlier this year.

According to Reuters, all these other businesses are focusing on developing AI models with wide consumer and business applications, but SSI wants to build “a straight shot to safe superintelligence.”  SSI chief executive Gross revealed this will also be supported by research and development.

“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 RD on our product before bringing it to market.”

– Gross.

Sutskever, who left OpenAI in May was among the team that led a failed coup against CEO Sam Altman over a “breakdown of communications.” However, he backtracked on his decision to join the other team that demanded for Altman’s reinstatement and the board’s resignation. After this attempted coup, Sutskever’s role at OpenAI diminished and he was removed from the board before leaving the company in May.