Alphabet Inc. and Nvidia Corporation have invested in a rapidly growing artificial intelligence (AI) startup, Safe Superintelligence (SSI), co-founded by OpenAI’s former chief scientist, Ilya Sutskever, according to a source familiar with the matter.
This strategic move by the two tech giants aligns with a broader trend of infrastructure providers investing in AI ventures that demand significant computational resources.
SSI has quickly gained momentum and, the same source reports, achieved a valuation of $32 billion in a funding round spearheaded by venture capital firm Greenoaks. The startup has garnered considerable attention within the AI community due to Sutskever’s reputation for identifying crucial advancements in AI technology.
The investment highlights a renewed focus by Alphabet and Nvidia on startups developing cutting-edge AI solutions. Earlier in the week, Alphabet’s cloud computing division finalized an agreement to provide SSI with access to its proprietary AI chips, tensor processing units (TPUs). Alphabet, which already operates its own AI models, continues to expand its hardware strategy through external sales.
Reuters reported that Alphabet initially reserved TPUs for internal use. However, this new agreement signifies a shift in strategy, making SSI one of the first companies to receive TPUs at scale to support its frontier AI initiatives.
During an interview with Reuters, Google’s managing director overseeing startup partnerships, Darren Mowry, commented, “With these foundational model builders, the gravity is increasing dramatically over to us.”
Sources indicate that the startup SSI has reportedly chosen to utilize TPUs over graphics processing units (GPUs) for its AI research and development. This decision contrasts with the historical preference among AI developers for Nvidia GPUs, which hold a dominant market share of over 80 percent.
Google Cloud currently offers both Nvidia GPUs and its internally developed TPUs. The TPUs, designed to outperform general-purpose GPUs in specific AI tasks, have been deployed in building large-scale AI models for companies such as Apple Inc. and Anthropic. Anthropic, a competitor to OpenAI, has secured substantial funding from both Google and Amazon.
Despite gaining access to Amazon’s in-house Trainium and Inferentia chips, Anthropic has continued to utilize TPUs for its AI development, two sources confirmed. The company has also not reduced its investment in Google’s AI chip offerings.
Alphabet and Nvidia have both declined to disclose the financial details of their investment in SSI. Representatives from SSI have also refrained from commenting on the matter.
Google and Nvidia now face significant competition from Amazon, which has been advancing its semiconductor initiatives to support partners like Anthropic. In December, Amazon named Anthropic as the inaugural customer for a supercomputer powered by hundreds of thousands of its proprietary chips.
Meanwhile, Microsoft has strengthened its alliance with OpenAI through substantial capital investments. Nvidia has also extended its backing to OpenAI and invested in xAI, an artificial intelligence venture founded by Elon Musk.
It has become increasingly common for cloud providers to invest in AI startups that not only develop foundational models but also become significant consumers of their infrastructure.
