Startups often struggle for years to reach the coveted $1 billion valuation, but if you come with a giant reputation, you can end up raising $1 billion in your first funding round.
Safe SuperIntelligence (SSI), the startup founded by former OpenAI Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever, has raised $1 billion in a funding round. The round was led by marquee investors including NFDG, a16z, Sequoia, DST Global, and SV Angel. While the startup didn’t reveal its valuation, it is estimated to be worth $5 billion after the fundraise.
“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 R&D on our product before bringing it to market,” SSI Chief Executive Daniel Gross said. The company was announced only in June this year, and has an estimated 10 employees.
SSI had been founded under dramatic circumstances. Late last year, OpenAI founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman were expelled from their own startup through a board coup, and it was widely believed that Ilya Sutskever, the CTO, had been one of the people responsible for driving them out. But the coup didn’t go as planned — after their ouster, hundreds of OpenAI employees pledged their support to the duo, and in what seemed to be a negotiating tactic, Altman and Brockman joined Microsoft. But soon after, they rejoined OpenAI, and were reinstated to their original positions.
That put Ilya Sutskever in a difficult spot, both publicly and within OpenAI.In fact, he had entirely disappeared from social media, with people wondering where he was for months. In January this year, Sam Altman had said that he was “unsure” if Sutskever was even working at OpenAI.
But in June this year, Sutskever had re-emerged, and announced a new startup, SSI. “I am starting a new company,” he had written on X. “We will pursue safe superintelligence in a straight shot, with one focus, one goal, and one product,” he had said.
Sutskever is one of the most influential figures in AI, having contributed to research that has led to some of the recent developments in AI. As the CTO of OpenAI, he was widely thought to be one of the brains behind ChatGPT, which had pioneered the recent AI revolution. As such, Ilya has been able to get the world’s top investors to back his new AI company. The company’s goals are also lofty — SSI plans to develop superintelligence, and the payoff for such an investment can end up being astronomical. And as its $1 billion fundraise shows, the sky can be the limit in the venture capital world if you have a reputation that precedes you.