NVIDIA Invests in Ilya Sutskever’s SSI to Scale Superintelligence AI

Safe Superintelligence Inc (SSI), the AI startup founded by former OpenAI Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever, has partnered with NVIDIA. The collaboration entails an equity investment and access to the chipmaker’s next-generation Vera Rubin systems, giving the startup a tenfold increase in computing capacity.

The companies did not disclose the financial terms of the deal. However, Reuters reported that NVIDIA is investing about $5 billion in SSI. 

SSI said the investment and access to NVIDIA’s Vera Rubin platform will substantially increase its compute. The companies will also work together on advancing NVIDIA’s current and future computing platforms, with SSI contributing insights from its AI research.

The partnership marks one of the first major public announcements from SSI since the company was founded in 2024 by Sutskever, Daniel Gross, and Daniel Levy. The startup has largely operated in stealth, developing ‘safe superintelligence’ rather than releasing commercial AI products.

According to NVIDIA, the company decided to partner with SSI after obtaining what it described as rare access to the startup’s closely guarded research. SSI has spent the past two years pursuing a new research direction in developing a robustly aligned artificial intelligence.

“Ilya has pioneered fundamental breakthroughs at the foundation of modern AI, beginning with AlexNet,” NVIDIA Founder and CEO Jensen Huang said in a statement. "We are excited to see what new breakthroughs SSI will discover powered by our Vera Rubin platform.”

Sutskever said the startup had reached a stage where it was ready to expand its research efforts.

“We have research that is worthy of scaling up, and having access to a big NVIDIA computer will let us do so,” he said. “We're incredibly proud to be partnering with Jensen and the NVIDIA team, and we are confident that our big bet on the Vera Rubin platform will take us to the next level.”

The partnership adds SSI to a growing list of AI companies securing large-scale infrastructure commitments from NVIDIA as demand for compute continues to rise. 

Last year, OpenAI partnered with the AI chipmaker to deploy chips in 10 GW of AI data centres, backed by over $100 billion in progressive investment. More recently, SK Group and NVIDIA announced plans for a $500+ billion partnership to establish AI infrastructure, featuring a 2 GW NVIDIA Vera Rubin DSX AI Factory built by SK Telecom.

SSI last raised $2 billion at a $32 billion valuation, backed by investors including Greenoaks, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Andreessen Horowitz. The NVIDIA investment deepens the relationship between the AI chipmaker and one of Silicon Valley’s most closely watched AI research startups.