Ilya Sutskever, who co-founded Safe Superintelligence (SSI) in 2024, is taking over as CEO after Daniel Gross, the startup’s previous leader, left for Meta during a vigorous hiring drive. The goal of SSI and Meta’s recently established superintelligence team is to create cutting-edge AI systems that are more capable than humans.
In a recent message to employees and investors, Sutskever confirmed that Gross formally left SSI on June 29.
Sutskever remarked, “We appreciate his early contributions to the company and wish him well in his next endeavour.”
For his part, Daniel Gross expressed hope for the company’s future. In April, SSI’s most recent valuation was an astounding USD 32 billion.
“The company has a very bright future, and I expect miracles to follow,” he wrote in an X post.
The Mark Zuckerberg-led company reportedly offers some AI researchers signing bonuses of up to USD 100 million as part of a massive hiring spree to revamp its AI strategy, which coincides with his move to Meta.
According to Bloomberg, Zuckerberg has personally led the recruitment effort for the “Superintelligence Team.”
He has invited leading AI researchers and engineers from other companies to meet with him at his homes in Palo Alto and Lake Tahoe to discuss offers to join Meta.
Mark Zuckerberg’s aim is for Meta to be the first company to achieve superintelligence, which it can then use to power its products, like its AI chatbot and AI smart glasses.
Recently, Mark Zuckerberg announced the launch of Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL), a new division that will be co-led by former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman and Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang. Talent was sourced from Anthropic, Google DeepMind, and OpenAI for the team. Meta is also offering up to a nine-figure pay for researchers on its “Superintelligence Team.”
Friedman, Daniel Gross’ investment partner at NFDG, a venture capital firm, has also supported SSI in the past. Sutskever, OpenAI alumnus Daniel Levy, and Gross co-founded SSI.
According to reports, Gross’s new position at Meta will involve working on A.Me. items for MSL.
Life And Career Of Ilya Sutskever
Ilya Sutskever, one of the most prominent figures in artificial intelligence and a co-founder of Safe Superintelligence, was born in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia. His family first relocated to Israel when he was five years old, and then, when he was a teenager, to Canada.
Having been captivated by math and computers since childhood, he studied computer science at the University of Toronto for his bachelor’s and master’s degrees before completing his doctorate under deep learning pioneer Geoffrey Hinton. The foundation for numerous significant developments in AI was established by his doctoral work, especially the creation of deep neural networks.
His career took off when Sutskever co-authored the ground-breaking AlexNet paper in 2012, which won the ImageNet competition and set off the current AI boom. He joined Google Brain after working with Andrew Ng as a postdoc at Stanford, where he helped create the Sequence-to-Sequence (Seq2Seq) model for machine translation, which was another significant advancement in neural network research. Additionally, he helped shape large-scale AI infrastructure and contributed to the initial iterations of TensorFlow.
Sutskever co-founded OpenAI in 2015 and was its Chief Scientist. He helped create the GPT models at OpenAI and went on to lead the Superalignment team, which addressed the crucial problem of bringing superintelligent AI into line with human values.
Sutskever’s departure in 2024, however, was the result of internal conflicts at OpenAI, especially those concerning safety and governance, and the high-profile boardroom scandal that resulted in the temporary removal of CEO Sam Altman.
Sutskever, Daniel Levy, and Daniel Gross founded Safe Superintelligence shortly after departing OpenAI. SSI was established with the sole goal of creating a superintelligence that is safe, aligned, and unaffected by commercial distractions.
With offices in Palo Alto and Tel Aviv, the business has emerged as a key player in the conversation about AI safety. In July 2025, Sutskever assumed the role of CEO after Gross left to join Meta, continuing his long-standing dedication to creating AI that advances humanity transparently and safely.
Image Credits: Ilya Sutskever LinkedIn