Exclusive: Alphabet, Nvidia invest in OpenAI co-founder Sutskever's SSI, source says
作者：By Kenrick Cai and Krystal HuApril 12, 20253:43 AM UTCUpdated ago
People walk next to a Google logo during a trade fair in Hannover Messe, in Hanover, Germany, April 22, 2024. REUTERS/Annegret Hilse/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab
- Google also lands SSI as anchor customer for its TPU chips
- TPUs compete with Nvidia's market leading GPUs
- Google is expanding TPU access to external companies, exec says
SAN FRANCISCO, April 11 (Reuters) - Alphabet
(GOOGL.O), opens new taband Nvidia
(NVDA.O), opens new tabhave joined prominent venture capital investors to back Safe Superintelligence (SSI), a startup co-founded by OpenAI's former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever that has quickly risen to become one of the most valuable artificial intelligence startups months after its launch, a source familiar with the matter said.
The funding illustrates renewed interest from the big tech and infrastructure providers in making strategic investments in the startups developing cutting-edge AI that requires massive amounts of computing power. Alphabet, which has its own AI models, earlier in the week announced a deal by its cloud computing arm to sell SSI access to tensor processing units (TPUs), its in-house AI chips.
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SSI, which sources say was recently valued at $32 billion in a round led by Greenoaks, is one of the highest-profile startups working on AI model research, thanks to Sutskever's stellar track record in predicting the next big thing in AI development.
Like many of its competitors, it has a huge demand for chips.
Reuters could not determine the exact terms of Alphabet's and Nvidia's investment in SSI. Spokespeople for all three companies declined to comment.
The twin moves by Alphabet's corporate and cloud division with high-profile AI labs including SSI and Anthropic show the tech giant's evolving AI hardware strategy.
Google originally reserved TPUs for in-house use. The deal to sell SSI chips in significant quantities to support its frontier AI research exemplifies the company's ongoing strategy to expand sales to external customers, Darren Mowry, a managing director in charge of Google's partnerships with startups, said in an interview with Reuters this week.
"With these foundational model builders, the gravity is increasing dramatically over to us," he said.
AI developers have historically preferred Nvidia's graphics processing units, which hold more than 80% of the AI chips market.
But SSI is so far primarily using TPUs rather than GPUs for its AI research and development, two sources said.
Google offers both Nvidia GPUs and its own TPUs through its cloud service. Its own chips are intended to excel at specific AI tasks and are more efficient than general-purpose GPUs. These chips have been used to build large-scale AI models, such as Apple
(AAPL.O), opens new taband Anthropic, an OpenAI competitor that has received billions of dollars of funding from Google and Amazon
(AMZN.O), opens new tab.
Google and Nvidia also face a challenger in Amazon, which is building its own competing processors called Trainium and Inferentia. Amazon has said as far back as 2023 that Anthropic would develop its technology on those chips. The tech giant announced in December that Anthropic would be the first customer to use a massive supercomputer powered by hundreds of thousands of its own chips.
In the meantime, Anthropic continues to use TPUs for its AI development and has not decreased spending on Google's chips, two sources said.
It is increasingly common for major cloud providers to invest heavily in AI startups that not only build foundational models but also serve as significant customers of their infrastructure. For instance, Amazon and Google have both invested in Anthropic, while Microsoft
(MSFT.O), opens new tabhas placed substantial bets on OpenAI. Nvidia has also backed OpenAI, as well as Elon Musk's xAI.
Reporting by Kenrick Cai in Las Vegas, Max Cherney in San Francisco and Krystal Hu in New York; editing by Diane Craft
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab
Kenrick Cai is a correspondent for Reuters based in San Francisco. He covers Google, its parent company Alphabet and artificial intelligence. Cai joined Reuters in 2024. He previously worked at Forbes magazine, where he was a staff writer covering venture capital and startups. He received a Best in Business award from the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing in 2023. He is a graduate of Duke University.
Krystal reports on venture capital and startups for Reuters. She covers Silicon Valley and beyond through the lens of money and characters, with a focus on growth-stage startups, tech investments and AI. She has previously covered M&A for Reuters, breaking stories on Trump's SPAC and Elon Musk's Twitter financing. Previously, she reported on Amazon for Yahoo Finance, and her investigation of the company's retail practice was cited by lawmakers in Congress. Krystal started a career in journalism by writing about tech and politics in China. She has a master's degree from New York University, and enjoys a scoop of Matcha ice cream as much as getting a scoop at work.
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