AI company Safe Superintelligence (SSI) is hiring many dozens of employees in Israel "Globes" has learned. The company, which is striving to create safe artificial intelligence, was cofounded by Ilya Sutskever, the brain behind AI giant OpenAI, who grew up in Israel and studied at the Open University before moving to Canada. SSI has opened offices in Palo Alto, California and in Tel Aviv's Midtown office tower.
SSI aims to produce artificial intelligence with very high capabilities that will allow it to independently develop useful applications such as developing drugs for treating diseases and new materials, with very strong protections that will prevent it from manipulating humans. When presenting the company's vision, Sutzkever pledged that he would not launch an AI model to the world before ensuring it meets all the necessary safety standards.
Last month "Globes" revealed that SSI had hired an initial research team in Tel Aviv, which includes researchers in the fields of computer science and mathematics, to build the company's first AI model.
Among the first employees to be hired in Tel Aviv is Dr. Yair Carmon, a senior lecturer in Tel Aviv University's Faculty of Computer Science. He is on unpaid leave so that he can work at SSI. The search for SSI Israel's employees, "Globes" has learned, is being conducted in complete secrecy. Employees do not publish that they work for SSI on social media such as LinkedIn and many work from home to enhance maximum confidentiality.
SSI's expansion in Israel comes amid reports by "Reuters" that Google parent company Alphabet and Nvidia have invested in the AI developer. Alphabet, which earlier this month signed a deal through its cloud computing division to offer access to its proprietary tensor processing units (TPUs) to SSI, has confirmed the report. But it is not clear if Alphabet and Nvidia made the investment as part of the $1 billion financing round closed two months ago by SSI and led by Greenoaks Capital Partners at an estimated company valuation of $30 billion.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on April 14, 2025.
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