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A new artificial intelligence company from one of the cofounders of OpenAI is quickly becoming one of the most highly valued AI firms in an increasingly crowded marketplace. Ilya Sutskevers Safe Superintelligence (SSI) is in the process of raising in excess of $1 billion with a valuation topping $30 billion. Bloomberg reports San Francisco-based Greenoaks Capital Partners is leading the deal and plans to invest $500 million itself. Greenoaks did not reply to a request for comment about the investment. $30 billion might be well short of the $340 billion valuation OpenAI boasts, but its still well above many others in the space, including Perplexity, which has a $9 billion valuation. The new figure is significantly higher than SSIs $5 billion valuation in its last round, held this past September, when it raised $1 billion from investors including Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz. SSI was founded by Ilya Sutskever, Daniel Gross, and Daniel Levy last June, just one month after Sutskever departed OpenAI. Very little is known about the company so far, aside from its stated goal of building . . . well, a safe superintelligent AI system. The company does not yet have a product on the market. We approach safety and capabilities in tandem as technical problems to be solved through revolutionary engineering and scientific breakthroughs, the companys website reads. We plan to advance capabilities as fast as possible while making sure our safety always remains ahead. . . . We have started the worlds first straight-shot SSI lab, with one goal and one product: a safe superintelligence. Ilya Sutskever, born in Russia but raised in Jerusalem, studied with AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton, who has warned about the dangers of AI. A short stint at Google led to his meeting and ultimately working with cofounders Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and Elon Musk, on the organization that would become OpenAI. (Musk would later call Sutskever the linchpin to OpenAIs success.) Sutskever was one of the board members who led the push to remove Altman from the CEO role at OpenAI for a short period at the end of 2023. Sutskever and Altman reportedly clashed over the pace at which generative AI is being commercialized. Days after helping orchestrate the coup, Sutskever reversed course, signing onto an employee letter demanding Altmans return and expressing regret for his participation in the boards actions. He was removed from the board after Altman returned. (Sutskever isn’t the only OpenAI alum working on his own AI project. On Tuesday, former chief technology officer Mira Murati officially announced Thinking Machines Lab, her AI startup.) When Sutskever left OpenAI, he posted on X that he was working on a new project that is very personally meaningful to me about which I will share details in due time. Even with the subsequent announcement about SSIs creation last June, those details remain scant. SSI and Sutskever have dropped a few hints, however, saying that they plan on creating a single product with one focus and one goal. And SSI has made it clear that it plans to ignore pressure from markets or investors to release its product. Our singular focus means no distraction by management overhead or product cycles, and our business model means safety, security, and progress are all insulated from short-term commercial pressures, the website reads. Sutskever is widely respected as one of the worlds top AI researchers, which makes this possible funding round less surprising (even if the companys valuation is higher than expected). Despite that, he has eschewed the spotlight for much of his career, not doing many interviews, but speaking about AIs potential for both good and bad when he does. AI is a great thing. It will solve all the problems that we have today. It will solve unemployment . . . disease . . . poverty, he said in a documentary titled, iHuman, from filmmaker Tonje Hessen Schei, which came out in 2020. But it will also create new problems,” Sutskever continued. “The problem of fake news is going to be a million times worse. Cyberattacks will become much more extreme. We will have totally automated AI weapons. I think AI has the potential to create infinitely stable dictatorships.”
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Thinking Machines Lab, an AI startup founded by former OpenAI Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati, has tapped about 30 leading researchers and engineers from competitors such as OpenAI, Meta and Mistral, it said in a blog post on Tuesday. The team roughly two-thirds of which comprises former OpenAI employees includes Barret Zoph, a prominent researcher who left the ChatGPT maker on the same day as Murati in late September. Zoph will serve as the startup’s technology chief. OpenAI co-founder John Schulman is the startup’s chief scientist. Schulman left OpenAI for rival Anthropic in August, citing wanting to “focus on AI alignment”. AI alignment refers to a process of encoding human values into AI models to make them safer and more reliable a key focus for Murati’s startup. Murati is among a growing list of former OpenAI executives, who are responsible for the launch of startups such as Anthropic and Safe Superintelligence. She is raising funds from venture capitalists for her new artificial intelligence startup, Reuters had reported in October. “While current systems excel at programming and mathematics, we’re building AI that can adapt to the full spectrum of human expertise and enable a broader spectrum of applications,” the startup said. The company plans to enable external research on alignment by sharing code, datasets, and model specifications, it said. After Murati joined OpenAI in June 2018, she frequently appeared alongside CEO Sam Altman as the public face of the ChatGPT maker. Her abrupt resignation had marked another high-profile exit from the company as it undergoes major governance structure changes. Prior to OpenAI, she had worked at augmented reality startup Leap Motion and Tesla. Krystal Hu and Arsheeya Bajwa, Reuters
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The Trump administration is giving Americas schools and universities two weeks to eliminate diversity initiatives or risk losing federal money, raising the stakes in the presidents fight against wokeness and sowing confusion as schools scramble to comply. In a memo Friday, the Education Department gave an ultimatum to stop using racial preferences as a factor in admissions, financial aid, hiring or other areas. Schools are being given 14 days to end any practice that treats students or workers differently because of their race. Educators at colleges nationwide were rushing to evaluate their risk and decide whether to stand up for practices they believe are legal. The sweeping demand threatens to upend all aspects of campus operations, from questions on college applications to classroom lessons and campus clubs. Its meant to correct what the memo described as rampant discrimination in education, often against white and Asian students. Schools have been operating on the pretext that selecting students for diversity or similar euphemisms is not selecting them based on race, said Craig Trainor, acting assistant secretary for civil rights. No longer. Students should be assessed according to merit, accomplishment and character. The guidance drew sharp backlash from civil rights groups and university groups. Some believe its vague language is meant to have a chilling effect, pressuring schools to eliminate anything touching on the topic of race even if it may be defensible in court. Creating a sense of risk around doing work that might promote diverse and welcoming campuses is much more of the goal than a clear statement of existing law, said Jonathan Fansmith, senior vice president of government relations at the American Council on Education, an association of college presidents. The memo is an extension of President Donald Trumps executive order banning diversity, equity and inclusion programs. It essentially reflects a change in the federal governments interpretation of antidiscrimination laws. As legal justification, it cites the 2023 Supreme Court decision barring race as a factor in college admissions. Although the ruling applied only to admissions, the memo says it applies more broadly. Put simply, educational institutions may neither separate or segregate students based on race, nor distribute benefits or burdens based on race, it said. On Monday the Education Department announced it also cut $600 million in grants for organizations that train teachers. The programs promoted divisive concepts like DEI, critical race theory and social justice activism, the department said. The new guidance seeks to remove race from areas including financial aid, housing, graduation ceremonies, hiring and promotion. It also takes aim directly at college admissions, suggesting colleges have sought to work around the Supreme Court’s decision. Using non-racial information as a proxy for race will now be viewed as a violation of federal law, the memo said. As an example, it said it’s unlawful for colleges to eliminate standardized testing requirements to achieve a desired racial balance or to increase racial diversity. Dozens of colleges across the U.S. have dropped SAT and ACT requirements in recent years for a variety of factors. The guidance reaches beyond the scope of the Supreme Court’s decision and is almost certain to be challenged in court, said Angel B. Pérez, CEO of the National Association for College Admission Counseling. While the Supreme Court decision bans race as a factor in evaluating applicants, the memo aims to ban race even in the recruitment of potential students, he said. Practices that have long been commonplace could suddenly become legal liabilities, Pérez said, including recruiting in underrepresented areas or buying lists of potential students with certain academic and demographic information. Companies including the College Board and ACT have long sold lists of students to colleges, acting as a matchmaker and providing a pool of potential applicants who meet certain criteria. Colleges and universities are going to find themselves between a rock and a hard place, Pérez said. They know that what theyre doing is not illegal, but they are worried that if they do not comply, not having federal funding will decimate them. College application essays are targeted by the memo, raising questions about how far colleges can go in inviting students to share their personal experiences, including their race. The guidance says colleges can’t use essays as a way of predicting a student’s race. In the Supreme Court decision, Chief Justice John Roberts said nothing in the ruling prevents colleges from considering an applicants discussion of how race affected his or her life, though he warned that colleges couldn’t simply use essays as an indirect workaround to consider applicants’ race. In a campus letter at the University of Michigan, President Santa J. Ono said leaders are working to understand the implications. Some colleges said they expect little change from the memo. At Oregon State University, a legal review concluded that its programs are fully compliant with all state and federal laws, according to a campus message from Rob Odom, vice president of university relations and marketing. The department memo appears to take aim at scholarships reserved for students from certain racial backgrounds. Theres been legal debate about whether the Supreme Court decision extends to financial aid, with some schools and institutions deciding to scrap racial requirements for certain scholarships. The National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators said theres no consensus on the question, and the group is trying to understand how the memo could affect student aid. What we do know, however, is that 14 days is insufficient time for schools to assess and implement any necessary changes to be in compliance, the group said in a statement. The last thing students need when making plans about how to pay for college is uncertainty over when or whether they will receive financial aid theyve been relying on. The confusion around Trump’s order was apparent at last week’s confirmation hearing for education secretary nominee Linda McMahon. Asked whether classes on African American history would run afoul of the president’s order, McMahon said she wasn’t quite certain. Collin Binkley, AP education writer The Associated Press education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find APs standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
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