Alphabet, Nvidia invest in OpenAI co-founder Sutskever’s SSI: source
Funding illustrates renewed interest from big tech and infrastructure providers in making strategic investments in start-ups developing cutting-edge AI
Alphabet and Nvidia have joined prominent venture capital investors to back Safe Superintelligence (SSI), a start-up co-founded by OpenAI’s former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever that has quickly risen to become one of the most valuable artificial intelligence start-ups months after its launch, a source familiar with the matter has said.
The funding illustrates renewed interest from the big tech and infrastructure providers in making strategic investments in the start-ups developing cutting-edge AI that requires massive amounts of computing power. Alphabet, which has its own AI models, earlier in the week announced a deal by its cloud computing arm to sell SSI access to tensor processing units (TPUs), its in-house AI chips.
SSI, which sources say was recently valued at US$32 billion in a round led by Greenoaks, is one of the highest-profile start-ups working on AI model research, thanks to Sutskever’s stellar track record in predicting the next big thing in AI development.
Like many of its competitors, it has a huge demand for chips.
Reuters could not determine the exact terms of Alphabet’s and Nvidia’s investment in SSI. Spokespeople for all three companies declined to comment.
The twin moves by Alphabet’s corporate and cloud division with high-profile AI labs including SSI and Anthropic show the tech giant’s evolving AI hardware strategy.