Nvidia and Safe Superintelligence (SSI), the AI startup founded by former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, have announced a long-term strategic partnership aimed at accelerating the company's research into safe artificial superintelligence.
As part of the agreement, Nvidia has made an investment in SSI and will provide access to its next-generation Vera Rubin computing platform. The companies said the move will increase SSI's available compute by an order of magnitude, giving the startup significantly more capacity to train and develop advanced AI systems.
Financial terms were not disclosed. However, Bloomberg reported that Nvidia committed $5 billion to the startup, while TechCrunch, citing a source familiar with the deal, said the investment stretches into multiple billions.
The companies also plan to work together on Nvidia’s current and future AI compute platforms, with SSI contributing research insights to their development.
"Ilya has pioneered fundamental breakthroughs at the foundation of modern AI, beginning with AlexNet," Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang said. "We are excited to see what new breakthroughs SSI will discover powered by our Vera Rubin platform."
Sutskever said the additional computing power will help advance the company's work.
"We have research that is worthy of scaling up, and having access to a big NVIDIA computer will let us do so," he said. "We're incredibly proud to be partnering with Jensen and the NVIDIA team, and we are confident that our big bet on the Vera Rubin platform will take us to the next level."
A quiet AI lab steps into the spotlight
Founded in 2024 by Sutskever and Daniel Levy, SSI has largely stayed out of the public eye while focusing on what it describes as a "straight-shot" path toward building safe superintelligence rather than releasing commercial AI products.
According to Nvidia, the chipmaker decided to deepen its relationship with SSI after gaining rare access to the startup's closely guarded research. The company said SSI has spent the past two years developing a new research direction designed to create powerful AI systems that remain robustly aligned with human goals.
The partnership follows SSI's earlier collaboration with Google Cloud, which provides computing resources for its research.
What the deal means for the AI race
The partnership underscores how access to computing power has become one of the biggest competitive advantages in AI development. Advanced chips remain scarce and expensive, making long-term supply agreements as valuable as financial backing for leading AI labs.
For Nvidia, the agreement strengthens relationships with one of the industry's highest-profile research startups while keeping its newest hardware at the center of cutting-edge AI work. The company has made similar investments in other AI startups as competition among chip providers intensifies.
SSI gains significantly more computing resources without shifting its stated focus away from long-term research, while Nvidia deepens ties with an AI lab whose future breakthroughs could help shape next-generation hardware.
Critics, however, have questioned whether Nvidia's growing network of investments in AI companies create circular financial ties between the dominant chip supplier and its customers.