Safe Superintelligence (SSI), an AI safety startup co-founded by former OpenAI researchers Ilya Sutskever and Daniel Levy alongside prominent angel investor Daniel Gross, has raised $1 billion, the company said Wednesday.
The deal reportedly valued the AI safety startup at $5 billion and included participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia, DST Global, SV Angel and NFDG, the investing group run by former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman and Gross.
SSI’s rapid ascent to unicorn status underscores the ability of highly sought-after researchers to command tremendous amounts of capital from VCs competing for the same rare talent in a scorching-hot market.
SSI’s mission is to develop a safe superintelligence, which the founders have described as “the most important technical challenge of our age.”
Sutskever was one of a slew of senior talent at OpenAI to depart the firm in recent months. In May, OpenAI dissolved its superalignment AI safety team, dedicated to researching the long-term risks of AI.
NFDG has catapulted into the AI deals market by leveraging connections in the field. The relatively new firm has assembled a war chest of more than $2 billion, The Information reported.
So far in 2024, Friedman and Gross have participated in more than 20 VC deals, including large checks for highly capitalized companies like Scale AI, ElevenLabs and Perplexity, according to Pitchbook data.
Investment in AI model safety has picked up steam recently as more companies crop up to address risks like deep fakes and model hallucination.
“We need to stop these models from hallucinating, we have to stop these models from getting attacked,” said Navin Chaddha, managing partner and AI investor at Mayfield. “The need is great, and there are many ways to essentially get there.”
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Ilya Sutskever, standing, is former chief scientist and co-founder of OpenAI. He left OpenAI for SSI in May. / Featured image by Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images
