Safe Superintelligence (SSI), an AI business co-founded by former OpenAI head scientist Ilya Sutskever, has secured more than $1 billion in funding from investors.
SSI’s CEO Daniel Gross confirmed the funding in a press release on Wednesday.
The huge funding injection will be used to create AI systems that not only outperform human skills but also prioritise safety, which is an increasing worry in the AI field.
Newsng gathered that SSI received financing from numerous top venture capital firms, including Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, DST Global, and SV Angel. NFDG, an investment partnership led by Nat Friedman and SSI CEO Daniel Gross, also took part in the financing.
According to Reuters, the new funding value SSI at $5 billion.
Before joining SSI, Sutskever led OpenAI’s now-defunct Superalignment project, which focused on broad AI safety research.
Sutskever quietly left OpenAI months after a highly publicised dispute between himself, many former OpenAI board members, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman over what Sutskever described as a “communication breakdown.”
“SSI is our mission, our name, and our entire product roadmap because it is our sole focus,” the co-founders wrote in a public letter. “Our singular focus means no distraction by management overhead or product cycles, and our business model means safety, security, and progress are all insulated from short-term commercial pressures.”
As per a Reuters article, SSI, presently functioning with a mere workforce of ten personnel, intends to utilise the funds to procure high-performance computing power and hire exceptional personnel.
“Our goal is to focus on research and development for a few years before bringing our product to market,” Gross stated.
We earlier reported in May that Ilya Sutskever announced his departure from the artificial intelligence startup a few months after OpenAI went through a leadership crisis involving co-founder and CEO Sam Altman.
