The $30 Billion AI Startup with No Product

Date: 2-Mar-2025

Hey AI enthusiast,

Welcome to the latest edition of the One More Thing in AI newsletter. In this edition, we talk about:

It is going to be a good one- enjoy!

Best,

Renjit

The $30 Billion AI Startup with No Product

Imagine a company worth more than United Airlines, yet it hasn’t released a single product. This is the story of Safe Superintelligence Inc. (SSI), founded by Ilya Sutskever, a co-founder of OpenAI.

In June 2024, Sutskever left OpenAI to start SSI, aiming to create a safe superintelligent AI. There was a lot of drama during those days and this newsletter had covered the moves in detail. Unlike other startups, SSI plans to release only one product: a fully developed superintelligent AI. This unique approach has attracted significant investor interest. Way to set investor expectations!

By September 2024, SSI raised $1 billion from venture capital firms, including Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital, boosting its valuation to $5 billion. Remarkably, by February 2025, SSI’s valuation soared to $30 billion, surpassing established companies like United Airlines. This leap highlights the immense confidence investors place in Sutskever’s vision.

However, SSI’s journey isn’t without skepticism. The company has no immediate plans to generate revenue or release intermediate products. Critics question the practicality of investing heavily in a venture with such a long-term and uncertain goal.

Sutskever’s belief in AI’s potential is well-documented. In 2022, he suggested that advanced neural networks might possess a form of consciousness.

This perspective underscores his commitment to pushing AI boundaries- this company is one to watch in the years ahead.

AI Coding Tip

Coding with AI? I have been too, of late. And you must have found that some of the LLMs are better at it than others.

For example, Claude is pretty good at practical coding, in my experience. I also found that Open AI’s o1 is good to write detail specs and the specs can be then fed into Claude to write high quality code.

Here is a tip from Matt Shumer (picture from X below) that captures his approach and is worth emulating:

Let me know how you fare in your own experiments with coding.

How to build an AI agent for Investment memo

Creating investment memos can be time-consuming- I have been doing it in my day job at my consulting firm (www.futureu.co).

Analyzing vast amounts of information often takes many hours per deal. This process consumes resources and delays decisions.

Fortunately, artificial intelligence now offers a solution by automating the drafting process.

AI can handle repetitive sections of memos, providing a comprehensive overview of a target company’s viability. This particular automation by scaleai can reduce the memo-building workload by up to 40%, potentially saving over many hours per opportunity.

To build an AI-driven investment memo generation tool, follow the steps in this link at (scaleai) » Link