Protected Superintelligence (SSI), an A.I. startup launched by OpenAI’s former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever in June, has already raised a staggering $1 billion in enterprise funding regardless of having solely ten workers, the corporate introduced on its web site yesterday (Sept. 4). SSI was co-founded by Sutskever, Daniel Gross, a former Y Combinator companion who beforehand led A.I. efforts at Apple, and Daniel Levy, who labored alongside Sutskever at OpenAI. The startup is presently creating synthetic basic intelligence, or AGI, whereas retaining a concentrate on security.
NFDG, a enterprise capital agency run by Gross and Nat Friedman, participated in SSI’s fundraising alongside Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, DST World and SV Angel. The startup is now valued at $5 billion, in accordance with Reuters, which cited sources accustomed to the matter.
The funds shall be partially earmarked for hiring at SSI, which says it’s “assembling a lean, cracked workforce of the world’s greatest engineers and researchers devoted to specializing in SSI and nothing else.” The corporate is trying to fill positions throughout information, {hardware}, machine studying and methods, in accordance with SSI’s job utility type. SSI will emphasize “good character” and extraordinary talents over expertise and credentials, Gross instructed Reuters, including that the startup plans to spend the following few years dedicated to analysis and growth. The corporate presently has solely ten workers unfold between its two places of work in Palo Alto, Calif. and Tel Aviv, Israel.
SSI’s investments may even go in the direction of increase computing energy, though the corporate has but to companion with any explicit cloud suppliers or chipmakers. Sutskever instructed Reuters that the startup’s method to scaling will differ from that of OpenAI however didn’t specify how. He additionally famous that, though SSI won’t open-source its major work but, there’ll hopefully “be many alternatives to open-source related superintelligence security work.”
Sutskever, 37, joined Google in 2013 after finishing a Ph.D. beneath the A.I. educational Geoffrey Hinton on the College of Toronto. He went on to co-found OpenAI in 2015 and served as its chief scientist till Might of this yr. A security workforce co-led by Sutskever that oversaw A.I.’s existential dangers was disbanded shortly after his departure.
Sutskever was a key member of the four-person OpenAI board that briefly ousted the corporate’s CEO, Sam Altman, final yr earlier than the chief was reinstated following pushback from traders and workers. Sutskever stated he regretted his involvement within the firing and was subsequently pushed out of the OpenAI board. The ousting was made doable on account of OpenAI’s distinctive company construction: initially based as a nonprofit, the corporate is overseen by an impartial nonprofit board and has a capped-profit arm. SSI, in the meantime, has a standard for-profit construction.
Regardless of his earlier struggles inside OpenAI, Sutskever instructed Reuters he has “a really excessive opinion concerning the trade” and security efforts of different A.I. firms. “I believe that as folks proceed to make progress, all of the completely different firms will understand—perhaps at barely completely different instances—the character of the problem that they’re dealing with.”
