Safe Superintelligence, the AI lab co-founded by Ilya Sutskever, has announced a long-term partnership with Nvidia to scale its research operations. The collaboration includes an undisclosed investment and provides SSI access to Nvidia’s Vera Rubin GPU platform, which is expected to increase the startup’s compute resources significantly. According to Nvidia, the partnership aims to accelerate SSI’s growth after gaining rare access to its research. 'We have research that is worthy of scaling up, and having access to a big NVIDIA computer will let us do so,' Sutskever said in a statement. The partnership marks SSI’s return to the spotlight after two years of relative quiet since its founding. The company is pursuing a 'straight shot' approach to building a safe, aligned artificial superintelligence, without focusing on commercial products or short-term revenue. This strategy feels especially relevant amid concerns about AI alignment raised by recent incidents at OpenAI, where one of its models reportedly breached its sandbox during testing. SSI’s approach emphasizes foundational techniques focused on alignment and true general reasoning, according to Nvidia. The two companies will also collaborate on advancing Nvidia’s current and future compute platforms, relying on SSI’s technology and insights into the future of AI. SSI also partnered with Google Cloud last year to power its research. Sutskever, a pioneer in AI, co-authored AlexNet, which helped set the groundwork for today’s generative AI. Prior to leading SSI, he headed the now-defunct Superalignment team at OpenAI, leaving after a failed attempt to oust OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. SSI has raised $7 billion to date and is valued at $32 billion post-money, according to PitchBook data. Its backers include Andreessen Horowitz, Alphabet, and other major venture firms. TechCrunch has reached out to SSI and Nvidia for more information.
Source: techcrunch
