Exclusive: Safe Superintelligence (SSI), the AI startup cofounded last year by OpenAI founder and former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, together with Daniel Gross and Daniel Levy, is expanding operations in Israel. Sources close to the matter have told "Globes" that the AI enterprise has leased offices in Tel Aviv's Midtown high-rise complex, at 144 Menachem Begin Road. At the same time SSI is seeking a general manager for Israeli operations, who will assemble a local team of researchers.
Each floor in the Midtown complex comprises office space of 1,660 square meters and sources familiar with the matter say that SSI has leased half a floor at most. Sources have also told "Globes" that SSI's Israel team will not be very large.
The company declined to comment on this report.
Rent of NIS 125,000 per month
Since this is a multi-owner project, it is difficult to know the exact rental that will be charged to Sutzkever's company, but the current estimate is that it is in the range of NIS 130 to 200 per square meter. For example, there is currently a 750-square-meter area "on the shelf" space offered for rent in the project, as well as 10 workstations, for which a rent of about NIS 150 per square meter is being asked. At this price, half a floor in the tower would cost about NIS 125,000 per month in rent. The lien that the company registered at the beginning of this month in favor of Bank Leumi is worth about NIS 171,690 shekels, probably reflects an advance payment on rent, and reinforcing this estimate.
The choice of Midtown reflects a developing trend in the domestic tech market. The complex, located in the center of Tel Aviv, has become one of the city's most significant tech hubs. Alongside technology giants like Microsoft, which has three floors in the complex and operates a significant development center, there are also growing startups like Ask-AI and ENV0. SSI's entry into the building strengthens Midtown's position as a magnet for advanced technology companies, and now especially in the field of artificial intelligence.
Raising capital at a $20 billion valuation
According to industry sources, SSI has already begun occupying the offices with an initial team of researchers and is focusing on hiring leading minds in the field of AI, mainly doctoral and postdoctoral students. This is a limited target audience of hundreds of Israelis and the competition for their recruitment pits the company against the research teams of tech giants already operating in Israel, such as Microsoft, Nvidia and others.
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SSI's expansion of operations in Israel comes in the wake of a significant development in the AI company's global operations. It raised $1 billion in September at a valuation of $5 billion led by prominent investors such as Sequoia and Andreessen Horowitz, and current talks for another financing round reflects a valuation of $20 billion – extraordinary for a company that was founded only a year ago and had 10 employees at the time of the last fundraising.
The impressive ability to raise capital stems not only from the founders' status in the industry, headed by Sutzkever, who is considered one of the leading and most important names in the world of AI and who left his position at OpenAI about a month before founding his company, but also from the significant challenges it faces. Among the reasons for this is the growing war for talent in the field of AI, which requires attractive remuneration packages. According to industry sources, the base salary for leading AI experts in Israel starts at NIS 50,000-60,000 per month, but will probably be around NIS 100,000 for senior experts, whom the company is targeting.
In addition, developing advanced AI models requires a huge investment in computing infrastructure. As an R&D company, SSI needs a long-term financial horizon that will allow it to focus on advanced technological development to present a commercial product – an approach that, according to Daniel Gross, requires "Several years of R&D before bringing a product to market." In general, they say in the industry, announcing a high valuation for a young company is part of the "game" in AI. With future rivals raising huge sums, SSI must present high numbers as well.
A business model different from competitors
SSI was founded in early 2024 by a team of world-renowned founders in the field of AI: Ilya Sutzkever, the former OpenAI chief scientist who grew up in Israel and immigrated with his family to Canada when he was 16; Daniel Gross, a former Israeli who led AI projects at Apple; and Daniel Levy, who previously worked at OpenAI. The company focuses on developing safe AI technologies.
In his most recent appearance at the NeurIPS conference in December, Sutzkever outlined the company’s approach to developing advanced AI models that doesn’t rely on ever-growing databases. This approach represents a significant innovation in a field where the prevailing trend is to constantly expand databases and increase computing power.
In this way, SSI’s business model differs from other AI companies. Instead of focusing on developing commercial products or competing to grow data sets, the company aims for a technological breakthrough in the field of efficient training of AI models. This approach focuses on developing innovative methods for achieving advanced performance with limited computational resources and data, similar to recent developments in the industry, such as DeepSeek (the Chinese model that allegedly managed to improve performance by optimizing existing models).
If SSI succeeds in its approach, it could not only change the way AI models are developed, but also provide a significant alternative to the models currently on the market, including those from OpenAI, and perhaps even using open source – which could be "sweet revenge on Sutzkever’s part," on OpenAI, market sources say.
Published by Globes, Israel business news – en.globes.co.il – on February 9, 2025.
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