one year on
Ilya Sutskever takes over as CEO of Safe Superintelligence
After co-founder Daniel Gross departs for Meta, Sutskever steps up to run SSI directly — and confirms Meta tried to buy the whole company.
Ilya Sutskever announces he is now CEO of Safe Superintelligence, the no-product, no-revenue, straight-to-superintelligence lab he co-founded a year ago — last valued at $32 billion.
The reshuffle follows the departure of co-founder and CEO Daniel Gross, who is joining Meta’s new superintelligence effort. Sutskever confirms what had been rumored for weeks: Meta approached SSI about an outright acquisition, and was turned down.
“We have the compute, we have the team, and we know what to do,” Sutskever writes. Daniel Levy steps up as president; the company otherwise says nothing about its research, its timeline, or its products — because there are none, on purpose.
In a week dominated by nine-figure hiring packages, the most secretive lab in the field losing its CEO to Zuckerberg — while refusing to sell — is the cleanest read yet on how hot the superintelligence market has become.
The record
Announces the change himself, writing that the company has the compute, has the team, and knows what to do.
view the original post →Read the subtext: Meta's acquisition attempt was rebuffed, but it still extracted a co-founder — nobody is beyond reach of the talent war.
One year later — open only if you can handle spoilers
SSI stayed silent and shipped nothing public for the following year — exactly as designed — while its valuation reportedly kept climbing. The 'straight shot to superintelligence, no products' thesis remains the field's most interesting unfalsifiable bet.