OpenAI Co-Founder Ilya Sutskever said that he would take on the role of CEO at Safe Superintelligence (SSI), the startup he launched last year. He will be taking on the role following former CEO Daniel Gross’ switch to Meta.
“As you know, Daniel Gross’s time with us has been winding down, and as of June 29 he is officially no longer a part of SSI. We are grateful for his early contributions to the company and wish him well in his next endeavor,” Sutskever said via X. “I am now formally CEO of SSI, and Daniel Levy is President. The technical team continues to report to me.” He also mentioned “rumors” of companies seeking to acquire the startup, and stated “we are flattered by their attention but are focused on seeing our work through.”
Sutskever previously served as OpenAI’s chief scientist and co-led the company’s Superalignment team with Jan Leike, who left to join rival AI firm Anthropic.
READ: Meta recruits Safe Superintelligence CEO after failed acquisition attempt (June 20, 2025)
Meta had recruited Gross for its own superintelligence team after trying and failing to acquire SSI. In addition to his role at SSI, Gross also runs a venture capital firm with Github CEO Nat Friedman — who’s also been hired by Meta — called NFDG.
Safe Superintelligence describes itself as the world’s “first straight-shot SSI lab,” implying that the company’s only ambition is to develop safe superintelligence as its name suggests. Sutskever started Safe Superintelligence shortly after leaving OpenAI, where he played a role in the brief ousting of CEO Sam Altman.
Meta has been on a hiring spree of late, and has been accused of poaching high level employees from various companies including OpenAI. The tech giant had offered OpenAI and its employees compensation of over $100 million, according to Altman’s statement in a podcast. While Altman initially said, “at least so far, none of our best people have decided to take him up on that,” he might have spoken too soon.
READ: Meta’s plan to poach OpenAI employees with $100 million packages (June 18, 2025)
Several top researchers from OpenAI have ended up joining Meta, including Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov, Xiaohua Zhai, and Trapit Bansal. OpenAI Chief Research Officer Mark Chen responded to these developments through a strongly worded memo. “I feel a visceral feeling right now, as if someone has broken into our home and stolen something,” Chen wrote. “Please trust that we haven’t been sitting idly by.” He also added that he was working with Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, and other leaders at the company “around the clock to talk to those with offers.”
“We’ve been more proactive than ever before, we’re recalibrating comp, and we’re scoping out creative ways to recognize and reward top talent,” he added.
Meta had also hired Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang for its superintelligence team. According to a Scale AI spokesperson, Meta is investing $14.3 billion as part of the deal, and will have a 49% stake in the artificial intelligence startup but will not have any voting power.