Safe Superintelligence (SSI) Raises $1 Billion in Series A - September 4, 2024

Executive Summary

Safe Superintelligence Inc. (SSI) is an AI safety company co-founded by Ilya Sutskever, former OpenAI chief scientist, focused on safely developing superintelligent AI systems.

Funding Amount: $1 Billion

Valuation: $5 Billion

Round Type: Series A

Announced: September 4, 2024

Headquarters: Palo Alto, California / Tel Aviv, Israel

Category: Artificial Intelligence - AGI Research

About Safe Superintelligence (SSI)

Safe Superintelligence (SSI) was founded in 2024 and is headquartered in Palo Alto, California / Tel Aviv, Israel.

Safe Superintelligence Inc. (SSI) is an AI safety company co-founded by Ilya Sutskever, former OpenAI chief scientist, focused on safely developing superintelligent AI systems.

Funding Round Details

Investment Amount

Safe Superintelligence (SSI) successfully raised $1 Billion in this Series A funding round.

Lead Investors & Participants

NFDG (Lead Investor): Investment partnership run by Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross (SSI CEO)

Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) (Major Investor): Leading venture capital firm investing in breakthrough AI technologies

Sequoia Capital (Major Investor): Premier venture capital firm with significant AI portfolio

DST Global (Growth Investor): Technology-focused investment firm backing transformative companies

SV Angel (Investor): San Francisco-based seed investor in major tech companies

Use of Funds

All funding is in cash (not cloud credits), primarily allocated to acquire computing power and hire top-tier AI researchers and engineers. The team will be split between offices in Palo Alto, California and Tel Aviv, Israel. SSI's goal is to safely build superintelligent AI systems through focused, long-term research.

Key Metrics & Achievements

• $5 billion valuation - one of the highest Series A valuations ever
• Founded by Ilya Sutskever, former OpenAI chief scientist and co-founder
• All-cash funding round (no cloud credits) totaling over $1 billion
• Team split between Palo Alto and Tel Aviv offices
• Focus on safe superintelligence - no product distractions
• Co-founders: Ilya Sutskever, Daniel Levy, Daniel Gross

Business Model

SSI operates with a singular focus: safely developing superintelligent AI without commercial distractions or premature product releases. Unlike typical AI companies rushing products to market, SSI is committed to long-term research with a "safety first" mandate. The company does not currently have revenue-generating products, instead focusing all resources on fundamental AI safety research.

Market Opportunity & Competition

SSI competes in the frontier AI research space with OpenAI, Anthropic, DeepMind (Google), and other AGI-focused companies. What differentiates SSI is its explicit singular focus on safety and its founding team's pedigree - Ilya Sutskever was instrumental in many of OpenAI's breakthroughs including GPT models and was a key voice advocating for AI safety.

This fundraising report was announced on September 4, 2024 and represents verified data from Crunchbase, Bloomberg, TechCrunch, The Robot Report, and official company announcements.