Safe Superintelligence (SSI), the AI startup founded last year by OpenAI founder and former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, is in talks to raise over $1 billion at a company valuation of over $30 billion, "Bloomberg" reports, according to a person "who asked not to be identified discussing private information."
This is six times the valuation of the financing round completed last September, when the company raised about $1 billion at a valuation of $5 billion. A valuation of over $30 billion would make SSI one of the most valuable privately-held tech companies in the world. Earlier this month "Reuters" reported that SSI is raising money at a $20 billion valuation – an underestimation according to "Bloomberg's" latest report.
SSI's current financing round continues a trend of huge investments in AI. At the beginning of the month OpenAI announced an enormous financing round of $6.6 billion, at a valuation of $157 billion. At the same time, Elon Musk's xAI is in talks to raise about $10 billion at a valuation of $75 billion – a sharp increase from the valuation of $51 billion in the previous round, according to "Bloomberg."
Offices in California and Tel Aviv
The company, which operates from offices in California and Tel Aviv, was founded in June 2024 by Sutskever together with Daniel Gross, a former Israeli who led AI projects at Apple, and Daniel Levy, a former researcher at OpenAI. The Israeli operation is represented by Adv. Amir Raz, who registered the company in the country and recently – as revealed by "Globes" – leased offices in the Midtown tower Tel Aviv.
San Francisco-based venture capital fund Greenoaks Capital Partners is leading the current round in SSI and plans to invest about $500 million. The fund, which already invests in AI companies Scale AI and Data Bricks, joins existing prominent investors such as Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz, DST Global, SV Angel and NFDG – a fund partially owned by Daniel Gross, one of the company's three founders.
At the NeurIPS conference for machine learning in December, Sutskever presented an innovative approach to AI development. "We have reached peak data and there will be no more. We have to make do with the data we have. "There is only one Internet," the 38-year-old scientist said, among other things, defining the new research direction as "a new mountain to climb." He criticized the prevailing approach in the industry, according to which improving AI models relies mainly on increasing the amount of data and hardware.
In a presentation to potential investors last September, SSI stressed plans to "quietly expand" while insulating its progress from commercial pressures. The company, which is not yet producing revenue, made it clear to investors not to expect profits in the near term.
Published by Globes, Israel business news – en.globes.co.il – on February 18, 2025.
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