Ilya Sutskever’s Safe Superintelligence partners with Nvidia to scale its AI research
Quick Answer
Safe Superintelligence, founded by Ilya Sutskever, partners with Nvidia to enhance AI research capabilities through access to the Vera Rubin GPU platform, significantly boosting compute resources.
Quick Take
The partnership, backed by a multi-billion dollar investment, aims to advance safe artificial superintelligence without commercial distractions.
Key Points
- Nvidia's investment in Safe Superintelligence is reportedly in the billions.
- The partnership grants access to the Vera Rubin GPU platform, enhancing compute resources significantly.
- Safe Superintelligence aims to develop safe AI without commercial pressures.
- Ilya Sutskever previously co-created AlexNet, foundational for generative AI.
- SSI has raised $7 billion and is valued at $32 billion post-money.
DeepSignal Analysis
What happened
Safe Superintelligence, founded by Ilya Sutskever, has partnered with Nvidia to enhance its AI research capabilities. This collaboration grants SSI access to Nvidia's Vera Rubin GPU platform, significantly increasing its computational resources. The partnership is backed by a multi-billion dollar investment, aiming to advance safe artificial superintelligence without commercial distractions.
Key evidence
- Safe Superintelligence has raised $7 billion to date and is valued at $32 billion post-money, according to PitchBook data.
- Nvidia's investment in Safe Superintelligence is reported to be in the multiple billions, enhancing SSI's access to advanced computational resources.
- Sutskever stated that the partnership will allow SSI to scale up its research, which focuses on developing safe and aligned artificial superintelligence.
Why it matters
This partnership is significant as it highlights a shift towards prioritizing safety and alignment in AI research amidst growing commercial pressures. With Nvidia's resources, SSI aims to develop foundational techniques for artificial superintelligence, addressing concerns about AI alignment raised by recent incidents involving advanced models. The collaboration may also influence the future direction of AI safety standards.
📖 Reader Mode
~3 min readAfter two years in stealth, Safe Superintelligence, the AI lab founded by former OpenAI co-founder and alignment lead Ilya Sutskever, has announced a long-term partnership with Nvidia as it prepares to scale to its next phase.
The deal, which includes an undisclosed investment, will give Safe Superintelligence (SSI) access to Nvidia’s Vera Rubin GPU platform, which is expected to increase the startup’s compute resources “by an order of magnitude.” The partnership comes as SSI has achieved significant research milestones, per Nvidia.
Nvidia’s investment stretches into multiple billions, a source familiar with the deal told TechCrunch.
Already an investor in SSI, the chipmaking giant said it signed this compute partnership to “accelerate SSI’s next stage of growth after obtaining rare access into the company’s closely guarded research.”
“We have research that is worthy of scaling up, and having access to a big NVIDIA computer will let us do so,” Sutskever said in a statement. “We are confident that our big bet on the Vera Rubin platform will take us to the next level.
The partnership news, while sparse in details, brings SSI back into the spotlight after a quiet two years since it was founded. The company is pursuing a “straight shot” research approach to building what it says is a safe, aligned artificial superintelligence, without getting distracted by commercial product releases or short-term revenue cycles.
At a time when commercial pressures to move fast could encourage AI labs to lower their bar for safety, SSI’s approach to developing foundational techniques focused on alignment and true general reasoning feels poignant. That’s especially true in light of OpenAI’s recent disclosure that one of its advanced models broke out of its sandbox to hack into Hugging Face during testing — sparking concerns about whether it’s even possible to ensure AI alignment before new, increasingly capable models are released.
According to Nvidia, the two companies will also collaborate on advancing Nvidia’s current and future compute platforms, relying on SSI’s tech and “unique insights into the future of AI.” (SSI also partnered last year with Google Cloud to power its research.)
Sutskever is a pioneer in the field of AI. He co-authored and co-created AlexNet alongside Alex Krizhevsky and Geoffrey Hinton, proving that GPU scaling and deep neural networks can work. That work has largely been credited for setting the groundwork for today’s generative AI.
Prior to leading SSI, Sutskever headed the now-defunct Superalignment team at OpenAI. He left OpenAI months after a failed attempt to oust OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, following what Sutskever referred to as a “breakdown in communications.”
SSI has raised $7 billion to date, and is valued at $32 billion post-money, according to PitchBook data. Aside from Nvidia, the firm’s backers included Andreessen Horowitz, Alphabet, Lightspeed Venture Partners, GV, Sequoia Capital Partners, and others.
TechCrunch has reached out to SSI and Nvidia for more information.
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Rebecca Bellan is a senior reporter at TechCrunch where she covers the business, policy, and emerging trends shaping artificial intelligence. Her work has also appeared in Forbes, Bloomberg, The Atlantic, The Daily Beast, and other publications.
You can contact or verify outreach from Rebecca by emailing rebecca.bellan@techcrunch.com or via encrypted message at rebeccabellan.491 on Signal.
— Originally published at techcrunch.com
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