Alphabet and Nvidia back Ilya Sutskever's Safe Superintelligence

Investment pushes AI startup to $32 billion valuation

Alphabet and Nvidia have joined a group of prominent investors backing Safe Superintelligence (SSI), a high-profile AI startup co-founded by former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever.

The investment comes amid a fresh $2 billion funding round that catapults SSI's valuation to $32 billion, making it one of the highest-valued startups in the rapidly evolving AI sector.

According to Reuters, venture capital giant Greenoaks led the round, contributing $500 million. Additional participation came from Andreessen Horowitz, DST Global, and Lightspeed Venture Partners.

Although the precise financial contributions from Alphabet and Nvidia remain undisclosed, sources familiar with the deal say the tech titans are betting big on SSI's ambitious vision to build safe and powerful AI systems that could one day surpass human intelligence.

Launched in June 2024, SSI marks a new chapter for Sutskever, 37, who is widely regarded as a key figure in the advancement of modern AI.

He co-founded the company with Daniel Gross, who previously headed AI initiatives at Apple, and Daniel Levy, another former researcher from OpenAI.

Within SSI, Sutskever takes the role of chief scientist, Levy serves as principal scientist, while Gross focuses on securing computing power and managing fundraising efforts.

The company operates out of Palo Alto and Tel Aviv, employing approximately 20 people as of March 2025.

This venture followed a tumultuous period for Sutskever at OpenAI. In late 2023, he was part of the non-profit parent board that voted to remove CEO Sam Altman, citing a "breakdown of communications." However, Sutskever quickly reversed his stance, joining a near-unanimous employee call for Altman's reinstatement and the board's resignation.

Despite Altman's return, Sutskever's position within OpenAI diminished; he was removed from the board and ultimately departed the company in May 2024.

Following his exit, OpenAI disbanded the "Superalignment" team co-led by Sutskever. This group was dedicated to ensuring future AI, particularly potential superintelligence, remains aligned with human values and safety, a mission now central to SSI.

SSI's latest funding round not only bolsters the company's financial war chest but also deepens its ties with two of the biggest players in the AI hardware space.

Alphabet, through its Google Cloud division, has agreed to provide SSI with access to its proprietary tensor processing units (TPUs), a move that underscores the growing competition in the AI chip market.

While Nvidia still commands more than 80% of the AI chip market thanks to its dominant GPU technology, Google has been steadily pushing its TPUs as a powerful alternative for large-scale AI model training.

SSI's decision to primarily use TPUs over Nvidia's GPUs is seen as a strategic endorsement of Google's hardware, marking a notable departure from industry norms.

"With these foundational model builders, the gravity is increasing dramatically over to us," said Darren Mowry, Google's Head of Startup Partnerships.

He added that Google Cloud's decision to provide TPU access to SSI reflects the company's expanding ambitions in the AI infrastructure space, a domain it has historically approached with caution when it comes to external clients.

For Nvidia, the investment aligns with its broader strategy of embedding itself across the AI startup ecosystem. Though SSI currently favours Google's TPUs, industry insiders suggest that Nvidia's financial backing positions it to remain a key partner if the startup diversifies its hardware needs in the future.