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Ilya Sutskever
OpenAI co-founder and former chief scientist who signed the 2023 extinction-risk statement and left in 2024 to found Safe Superintelligence Inc., a lab whose stated sole product is a superintelligence with safety kept ahead of capabilities.
Roles
- 2013 – 2015Research Scientist, Google BrainSource →
- Dec 2015 – May 2024Co-founder and Chief Scientist, OpenAIBoard member 2017–2023; took part in the November 2023 removal of Sam Altman and later expressed regret.Source →
- 19 Jun 2024 – presentCo-founder, Safe Superintelligence Inc.Founded with Daniel Gross and Daniel Levy; offices in Palo Alto and Tel Aviv.Source →
- Jul 2025 – presentChief Executive Officer, Safe Superintelligence Inc.Took over after Daniel Gross left for Meta; in July 2026 SSI announced a partnership and $5 billion investment from Nvidia.Source →
On the record
25 Nov 2025 · Podcast · Dwarkesh Podcast
It's the AI that's robustly aligned to care about sentient life specifically.
Chief Executive Officer, Safe Superintelligence Inc. at the time
Describing the kind of AI he wants to exist; the same interview argues pre-training has hit its limits.
Ilya Sutskever — We're moving from the age of scaling to the age of research →
3 Jul 2025 · Post · X
We have the compute, we have the team, and we know what to do. Together we will keep building safe superintelligence.
Chief Executive Officer, Safe Superintelligence Inc. at the time
On becoming CEO of SSI.
Ilya Sutskever will lead Safe Superintelligence following his CEO's exit →
19 Jun 2024 · Statement · Safe Superintelligence Inc.
We approach safety and capabilities in tandem, as technical problems to be solved through revolutionary engineering and scientific breakthroughs. We plan to advance capabilities as fast as possible while making sure our safety always remains ahead.
Co-founder, Safe Superintelligence Inc. at the time
Founding letter; the page opens "Superintelligence is within reach. Building safe superintelligence (SSI) is the most important technical problem of our time."
30 May 2023 · Statement · Center for AI Safety
Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.
Co-founder and Chief Scientist, OpenAI at the time
Listed as a signatory as "Co-Founder and Chief Scientist, OpenAI".