Nvidia has agreed to invest $5 billion in Safe Superintelligence, the secretive AI laboratory co-founded by former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever. The investment accompanies a long-term computing partnership that will give the startup access to Nvidia’s next-generation Vera Rubin systems.
The companies did not disclose the financial terms in their official announcement. Sources familiar with the transaction identified the investment as $5 billion, which would bring Safe Superintelligence’s total reported funding to approximately $7 billion.
Vera Rubin Systems Will Expand SSI’s Compute
Under the partnership, Safe Superintelligence will deploy Nvidia’s Vera Rubin platform to increase its available computing capacity by an order of magnitude. Nvidia said SSI had reached research milestones that justified expanding its infrastructure for the next stage of development.
“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 the official announcement. He added that SSI expects the Vera Rubin platform to support its next phase of research.
The companies will also work together on current and future Nvidia computing platforms. Nvidia said SSI’s research could provide insights that influence the design of hardware and systems intended for increasingly capable AI models.
SSI Remains Focused on a Single Research Goal
Sutskever launched SSI in 2024 with Daniel Gross and Daniel Levy. The company describes its strategy as a direct attempt to develop safe superintelligence without releasing commercial products or pursuing short-term revenue along the way.
That focus has kept much of its work private. Nvidia said it made the latest commitment after receiving rare access to SSI’s closely guarded research, although neither company disclosed the technical advances involved.
SSI previously raised $1 billion at a reported $5 billion valuation in 2024, followed by another $2 billion round that valued it at $32 billion in 2025. Its investors have included Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Alphabet, GV and Lightspeed Venture Partners.
Before founding SSI, Sutskever co-created AlexNet and served as OpenAI’s chief scientist. He later led OpenAI’s Superalignment team before leaving the company in 2024.
Featured image credits: Wikimedia Commons
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