Ilya Sutskever, AI startup Safe Superintelligence, co-founder of Openai, raises $2 billion at a $32 billion valuation

Safe Superintelligence (SSI) is a secret AI venture founded by Openai co-founder Ilya Sutskever, which drew another $2 billion at a valuation of $32 billion in accordance with the Financial Times.

The update follows last month’s Wall Street Journal report, where SSI was aiming for the same funding figures, despite a slightly lower cap of $30 billion. The company had already raised $1 billion last year, and was rumored to be preparing an additional $1 billion round. The SSI appears to have been led by Greenoaks and landed by Greenoaks.

Funding news follows reports that former Openai CTO Mira Murati is trying to raise $2 billion for stealth AI startups with a massive $10 billion valuation.

After leaving Openai in May 2024, Sutskever introduced SSI on a mission that was ambitious and equally focused. The product is not on sale. In fact, SSI is not in beta yet and hasn’t released anything yet. But the promise to build a smarter AI system than humans was more than enough to carry investors without falling off the railroad.

The company has driven things out with a $1 billion salary increase at a $5 billion valuation thanks to Sutskever’s reputation as one of the hearts behind Openai’s rise. If this latest deal is now closed completely, the value of SSI has jumped six times in just a few months. All of that – there are no products yet.

Why is it important?

Despite the lack of products on the table, SSI ratings have jumped six times since September 2024. The spikes in MiraMurati’s thinking machine’s focus on $2 billion salary increases, particularly among investors at AI startups led by researchers who tie with Openai.

That website is still just a mission statement.

SSI Heavyweight AI Team

SSI has established shops in both Silicon Valley and Tel Aviv and recently signed a lease in Midtown Tel Aviv. There is none yet as to who will run the local business, but the company has attracted Dr. Yair Carmon, a machine learning researcher at Tel Aviv University. Carmon received his PhD from Stanford University and has a solid track record in academic circles.

Supporters for the first round of fundraising include heavyweights such as Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, DST Global and Yuri Milner’s investment outfits.

So far, the public presence of SSI has focused more on employment than on products. Most of the action appears to be happening behind closed doors. This fits Sutskever’s goal of “scaling peace.” This is a subtle jab with high pressure commercial pushes seen in places like Openai, shifting the structure to accommodate the massive monetization following the ChatGpt boom.

Openai generated nearly $4 billion in revenue last year, and expects it to reach $11.6 billion this year. In contrast, SSIs are not making dollars. It doesn’t seem to be a problem for now.

SSI: A new, completely different direction to advance AI

Sutskever is not used to this game. At Openai, he early believed in scaling AI through calculations and large datasets. That approach helped Spark ChatGpt’s successful breakout. However, clean, large-scale training data became difficult to obtain, and he began to focus more on the reasoning stage. That shift helped drive Openai’s advances in reasoning and logic.

Now, along with SSI, he appears to be based on those insights, but there are different structures and philosophies.

The startup leadership team includes former Apul AI chief Daniel Gross and former Openai researcher Daniel Levi. But beyond big names, the company keeps its methodology and timeline close to your chest. Sutskever once called SSI’s approach “a new mountain to climb”, but did not provide a map on how they could reach the top.

His departure from Openai was not exactly smooth. He played a role in eliminating Sam Altman last year, but later regretted it. “I had no intention of harming Openai,” he said in X.

That reunion looks unlikely.

AI races are not slowing down

SSI charts its own courses, but the wider AI space is still burning. Openai is reportedly in talks to double its valuation to $300 billion. Humanity is chasing $60 billion. In China, Deepseek has also launched an open source model that rivals its counterparts at a fraction of the cost of the US. That move alone made it shaved $600 billion from Nvidia’s market capitalization earlier this year.

So far, it has not cooled down the appetite of investors. Big tech companies are still pouring billions into AI, judging by the latest revenue calls.

And it’s clear that startups are betting on depth beyond speed, even if SSI doesn’t reveal much. It not only builds what it wants, but continues to do what it is tailored to human intentions.

For now, every eye depends on what that one product is.