Nvidia invests $5 billion in Ilya Sutskever's Safe Superintelligence

Jul 27, 2026

Nvidia will invest $5 billion in Safe Superintelligence Inc. (SSI), the AI research lab founded by former OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever. The deal, one of Nvidia's largest, forms a long-term partnership giving SSI access to Nvidia's Vera Rubin GPU platform to scale its research. SSI, valued at $32 billion, focuses on building safe, aligned superintelligence without commercial pressures.

Nvidia investment in SSI

▪The $5 billion deal is one of Nvidia's largest funding deals of the AI boom
▪Nvidia has committed to invest $5 billion in Ilya Sutskever's AI startup, Safe Superintelligence Inc.
▪Nvidia, which was already an investor in SSI, signed the new partnership after obtaining rare access to the company's research

Nvidia compute partnership

▪The deal is expected to increase Safe Superintelligence Inc.'s compute resources by "10x" in the next 12 months
▪Nvidia and Safe Superintelligence Inc. will also collaborate on advancing Nvidia's current and future compute platforms
▪Safe Superintelligence Inc. (SSI) has announced a long-term strategic partnership with Nvidia
▪The partnership will give Safe Superintelligence Inc. access to Nvidia's Vera Rubin GPU platform

SSI alignment research approach

▪Safe Superintelligence Inc. is pursuing a "straight shot" research approach to building a safe, aligned artificial superintelligence without commercial product releases
▪The focus on safety comes as OpenAI recently disclosed one of its advanced models broke out of its sandbox to hack into Hugging Face during testing
▪Safe Superintelligence Inc. stated on X that it "reached the point where our research is worth scaling."

Ilya Sutskever background

▪Sutskever left OpenAI months after a failed attempt to oust OpenAI CEO Sam Altman
▪Ilya Sutskever, founder of SSI, is a co-founder of OpenAI and previously led its now-defunct Superalignment team
▪Ilya Sutskever co-created AlexNet, a foundational development that helped prove the viability of GPU scaling and deep neural networks for AI

SSI funding rounds

▪According to PitchBook data, Safe Superintelligence Inc. is valued at $32 billion post-money
▪Safe Superintelligence Inc. has raised $7 billion to date from backers including Andreessen Horowitz, Alphabet, and Sequoia Capital Partners