Exclusive News: Alphabet and Nvidia invest in SSI, founded by OpenAI co-founder -- News
Alphabet and Nvidia invested in Safe Superintelligence (SSI), a startup founded by former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever. The company has rapidly risen to become one of the valuable AI startups. This financing demonstrates the interest of large tech companies in cutting-edge AI startups. Alphabet's cloud computing division will sell the usage rights of its AI chip TPU to SSI, which has achieved a valuation of $32 billion in the financing led by Greenoaks
Reuters San Francisco, April 11 - A source familiar with the matter said that Alphabet (GOOGL.O) and Nvidia (NVDA.O) have joined the ranks of prominent venture capitalists to support the startup Safe Superintelligence (SSI), co-founded by former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever. The company has rapidly risen to become one of the most valuable artificial intelligence (AI) startups just months after its establishment.
This funding indicates that major technology and infrastructure providers are once again interested in making strategic investments in cutting-edge AI startups that require significant computational power. Alphabet, which has its own AI models, announced earlier this week that its cloud computing division will sell SSI the rights to use its internal artificial intelligence chips, Tensor Processing Units (TPUs).
Reports suggest that SSI recently achieved a valuation of $32 billion in a funding round led by Greenoaks, making it one of the highest-profile startups engaged in AI model research, thanks to Sutskever's impressive track record in predicting the next major events in AI development.
Like many competitors, the company has a huge demand for chips.
Reuters could not determine the specific terms of Alphabet and Nvidia's investment in SSI. Spokespersons for the three companies declined to comment
