Ilya Sutskever, co-founder and former chief scientist for OpenAI, has raised $1 billion for his artificial intelligence startup, Safe Superintelligence Inc. (SSI).
Funding and Partners
The company, Safe Superintelligence Inc. (SSI), announced the funding in a September 4 update to its website. SSI raised $1 billion from NFDG, a16z, Sequoia, DST Global, and SV Angel.
Founders and Mission
As Cointelegraph recently reported, Sutskever and engineer Dan Levy left OpenAI in June 2024, less than a year after Sutskever formed the firm’s “Superalignment” safety team. While Sutskever said he was leaving to pursue other opportunities, former employees have hinted at disagreements between CEO Sam Altman and other members of the firm and its board.
Competition and Prospects
SSI appears to be a direct competitor to OpenAI, with a slightly tweaked mission. SSI’s focus is to build an AI model with more intelligence than humans in a safe manner. Anthropic, another company founded by former OpenAI employees, has a similar mission, and OpenAI also focuses on safe AI development. However, SSI claims it will only ever develop one product: a safe superintelligence.
Whether SSI will use its $1 billion fund to build the world’s first superintelligence or a new competitor to ChatGPT remains to be seen. The company's results are expected to be significant for the further development of AI.
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