Israeli-Canadian computer scientist Ilya Sutskever is building a new artificial intelligence research lab from the ground up called Safe Superintelligence Inc.
He co-founded the startup with Daniel Gross, who was previously head of AI at Apple and a partner at Y Combinator, and former OpenAI researcher Daniel Levy.
Rewind: Sutskever co-founded OpenAI in 2015 with Sam Altman and several others, but resigned in May after months of uncertainty following the board's failed attempt to fire Altman in November. Sutskever was one of the four board members who voted to remove Altman.
Safe Superintelligence has one goal, the co-founders wrote in a blog post: to develop a super intelligent AI model, which would theoretically be smarter than humans, with safety built in.
"Our singular focus means no distraction by management overhead or product cycles, and our business model means safety, security, and progress are all insulated from short-term commercial pressures," they wrote.
They haven't disclosed how much funding they've raised or who their investors are.
Funding rounds to know
With dual headquarters in Palo Alto and Singapore, MainFunc has launched with $60 million in seed funding and is developing an AI-powered search product called Genspark. It was co-founded by two former Baidu, Microsoft and Google employees. "We want to build everything, even the business model, from the ground up," CEO Eric Jing told me.
Full story: New AI search startup launches with $60M seed funding
Another AI search startup, You.com, is reportedly raising $50 million in Series B funding round that could value the Palo Alto company as much as $900 million, Reuters reported.
Former Sephora and Stitch Fix executive Julie Bornstein has raised $50 million for Daydream, a personalized shopping tool powered by generative AI. The round was led by Forerunner Ventures and Index Ventures, with Google Ventures and True Ventures also participating. The company is registered in San Mateo County, according to California business filings.
Decagon AI raised $35 million in total funding across seed and Series A rounds that were led by Accel and included other investors such as Andreessen Horowitz, A-Star Partners, Elad Gil and others. The San Francisco-based startup is developing generative AI-powered customer service software.
San Francisco AI Factory Inc. has raised $20 million from Sequoia, Lux Capital, the CEOs of Hugging Face and Databricks, and other investors, Bloomberg News reported. The startup is developing AI coding tools for businesses.
Fresh Faces
OpenAI added former NSA chief Paul Nakasone to its board. NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden slammed the news, writing: "They've gone full mask-off: do not ever trust @OpenAI or its products … There is only one reason for appointing an @NSAGov Director to your board. This is a willful, calculated betrayal of the rights of every person on Earth. You have been warned."
San Francisco-based Writer has hired three new C-suite executives: Roger Kopfmann joins as the startup's new CFO, Andy Shorkey is its new chief revenue officer and Diego Lomanto is chief marketing officer. The company develops generative AI writing assistants for businesses and says it has more than 250 enterprises customers.
Rules and regulations
A California Assembly committee pushed forward a bill that aims to establish consumer privacy rights and other protections related to artificial intelligence. Called the California Artificial Intelligence Transparency Act, SB 942 also requires labeling and detection tools to help identity and track content created with generative AI software.
Full story: CA AI Transparency Act approved by Assembly Committee
Launches
San Francisco-based Anthropic announced an updated model, called Claude 3.5 Sonnet, which it says is twice as fast as its previous model, Claude 3 Opus. The Verge has more details.
Must reads
Perplexity Is a Bullshit Machine -Wired
OpenAI Expands Healthcare Push With Color Health’s Cancer Copilot -WSJ
SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son Is Ready for Next Big Bet After Hiatus -Bloomberg News
IMF warns of ‘profound concerns’ over rising inequality from AI -FT
OpenAI CEO Says Company Could Become Benefit Corporation Akin to Rivals Anthropic, xAI -the Information
