Exclusive: Ilya Sutskever, cofounder and the brain behind AI giant OpenAI, has hired his initial team of Israeli researchers in computer science for the new offices of Safe Superintelligence (SSI) that has been set up in Tel Aviv.
The promising new AI company, managed from Palo Alto and Tel Aviv, is remaining in stealth and distancing itself from the media. So far, SSI has made general statements that make it impossible to understand what exactly it is developing. It has presented a very general vision for creating "safe artificial intelligence," without explaining, and has also introduced its founding team. In addition to Sutzkever, its cofounders also include former Israeli and serial investor Daniel Gross, and Daniel Levy, an American who led OpenAI's optimization team. As is customary in companies in stealth, SSI staffers do not identify themselves as employees on social media.
Under-the-radar recruitment
"Globes" has learned that SSI has hired an initial research team in Tel Aviv, which includes researchers in the fields of computer science and mathematics, to build the company's first AI model.
Among the first employees to be hired in Tel Aviv is Dr. Yair Carmon, a senior lecturer in Tel Aviv University's Faculty of Computer Science since 2020. Carmon has three degrees in physics including a doctorate from Stanford University, which he received before returning to Israel to teach. Carmon's research focuses on machine learning, optimization and statistics and he describes himself on his personal page at Tel Aviv University as someone who is focused on "making machine learning and optimization algorithms more stable and reliable." He is on unpaid leave so that he can work at SSI. Carmon is one of the first employees on the Israeli team, and he is helping the company find additional researchers.
The search for SSI Israel's employees, "Globes" has learned, is being conducted by word of mouth between friends and without the assistance of recruitment experts, human resources consultants or placement companies. So far, a single-digit number of researchers from Google Research have been recruited, as well as programmers from Google. Another team members is Yaron Brodsky, a former software developer at Google who specializes in creative AI in the field of photo editing.
Other researchers hired include: Shahar Papini, a Technion graduate who worked for two years at Waze and then for blockchain company Starkware, and who probably joined SSI six months ago; Nitzan Tor, a math graduate from the Technion who three times won first prize in the world students competitions for mathematics and a computer engineer who previously worked for algo-trading company Final. As far as is known, SSI has currently suspended hiring and is not currently seeking more employees.
An industry executive who knows the company says, "The company's structure is very flat and non-hierarchical. There are no team leaders, and everyone works on a common project, with no real separation between Tel Aviv and Palo Alto." SSI, an abbreviation for Safe Superintelligence (Safe General Artificial Intelligence), is supposed to accomplish exactly this mission. According to Sutskever, it is designed to produce AI with very high capabilities, which will allow it to independently develop human applications such as medicines, new materials for production, or technology for absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. However, Sutzkever has always been concerned about the dark and dangerous aspect of AI that could give it the ability to harm humanity. When presenting the company's vision, Sutskever pledged that he would not launch a model before ensuring that it meets all the necessary safety standards.
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Sutskever is a former Israeli who moved to Canada with his parents as a teenager, where he completed degrees in mathematics and a doctorate in computer science. In 2016, he cofounded OpenAI after receiving a call from CEO Sam Altman. Last year, he left after a dispute with Altman and the shareholders over the commercial component of the company, which had been defined from its outset as a non-profit organization.
He founded SSI in June 2024, and set out to establish an office for it in Israel – which, as revealed by Globes last month, will be located in Tel Aviv's Midtown Tower. The company has been completing large financing rounds every few months, with the latest being reported on last week. According to those reports, SSI is in the process of raising $1 billion at a valuation of $30 billion, six times the value it was given in its fundraising last September. This valuation, given that the company is many years away from launching a product and certainly from profitability, is another indication of the high valuations at which prominent AI companies are raising capital. OpenAI is also seeking to raise capital at a valuation of $157 billion, while Elon Musk's xAI is in talks to raise $10 billion at a valuation of $75 billion.
Published by Globes, Israel business news – en.globes.co.il – on March 2, 2025.
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