AI’s Big Day — Startup Safe Superintelligence Raises $1B At Reported $5B Valuation

Artificial intelligence research lab Safe Superintelligence raised $1 billion from a litany of big-name investors including Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital.

The round valued the Palo Alto, California-based company at $5 billion, per Reuters, which first reported the round.

SSI, co-founded by OpenAI‘s former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, is looking to develop safe artificial intelligence systems — something that has been in the news a lot recently as fears increase of AI tech being harmful to humans and society.

A proposed California bill that has proven controversial in the industry is looking to put safety regulations and guardrails on AI — although many companies, including OpenAI, worry it may be too burdensome to many AI firms.

The 3-month-old startup will look to add computing power and hire new talent.

More money

SSI’s big raise was not the only big raise of the day.

Japan-based startup Sakana AI locked up a $100 million round led by Khosla Ventures, Lux Capital and New Enterprise Associates. The round also included an investment from Nvidia — which has been intensely active in the AI space investing in startups.

Sakana is looking to train low-cost generative AI models with small datasets — a very different approach from OpenAI. The company previously raised a $30 million round in January led by Lux Capital.