Ilya Sutskever Will Lead Safe Superintelligence After Meta Poaches His CEO

Ilya Sutskever, who co-founded Safe Superintelligence (SSI) last year, is stepping into the CEO role after the startup’s former leader, Daniel Gross, left for Meta amid an aggressive recruitment campaign. Both SSI and Meta’s newly formed superintelligence team are racing to develop advanced AI systems with capabilities that surpass those of humans.

Gross officially exited SSI on June 29, confirmed Sutskever last week in a message to staffers and investors. “We are grateful for his early contributions to the company and wish him well in his next endeavor,” Sutskever said.

Gross, for his part, expressed optimism about the company’s trajectory. SSI was most recently valued at a staggering $32 billion in April. “The company’s future is very bright, and I expect miracles to follow,” he said in a post on X.

His move to Meta comes as the Mark Zuckerberg-led company revamps its A.I. strategy through a major hiring spree, reportedly offering some A.I. researchers signing bonuses of up to $100 million. Zuckerberg recently unveiled its new unit, Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL), which will be co-led by Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang and ex-Github CEO Nat Friedman. The team includes talent recruited from OpenAI, Google DeepMind and Anthropic.

Friedman, also Gross’s investment partner at the venture capital firm NFDG, has previously backed SSI. Gross co-founded SSI with Sutskever and Daniel Levy, an OpenAI alum. In his new role at Meta, Gross will reportedly be working on A.I. products for MSL.

Zuckerberg attempted to acquire Safe Superintelligence

Gross wasn’t Meta’s first choice. Zuckerberg initially attempted to acquire SSI outright and tried—and failed—to recruit Sutskever, according to CNBC. After being rebuffed, he pivoted to hiring Gross and Friedman instead. Sutskever acknowledged these overtures in his recent message. “You might have heard rumors of companies looking to acquire us,” he said. “We are flattered by their attention but are focused on seeing our work through.”

A widely respected A.I. researcher, Sutskever co-developed the landmark neural network AlexNet in 2012 and later held roles at Google and OpenAI. As OpenAI’s chief scientist, he was a central figure in the failed attempt to oust CEO Sam Altman in 2023, and he left the company the following year to co-found SSI.

Unlike most A.I. firms, SSI doesn’t have a consumer product. Its sole focus is safely achieving superintelligence. The startup places a special emphasis on secrecy. It discourages employees from mentioning SSI on LinkedIn, and job candidates are reportedly asked to place their phones in electromagnetic wave-blocking cages before entering the office.

Despite Gross’s departure, Sutskever sought to reassure employees that the mission remains intact. “We have the compute, we have the team, and we know what to do. Together we will keep building safe superintelligence,” he said.