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OpenAI co-founder’s AI startup raises $1 billion

Ilya Sutskever, co-founder and former chief scientist at ChatGPT-maker OpenAI has raised $1 billion in cash for his newly formed AI startup Safe Superintelligence (SSI) with investments from Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, DST Global, SV Angel. NFDG, an investment partnership run by Nat Friedman and SSI’s Chief Executive Daniel Gross, also participated. The startup intends to help develop safe AI systems that surpass human intelligence levels. Based out of Tel Aviv in Israel and Palo Alto, SSI currently has 10 employees and is planning to expand their team while also getting the necessary compute to train AI systems. 

Sources said that the startup’s valuation could already be touching $5 billion. Sutskever quit OpenAI in May sometime after he was removed from the company’s board over the shock firing of Sam Altman. 

Internet Archive’s book sharing violated copyright law

An appeals court upheld the judgment that the Internet Archive violated copyright law by scanning and sharing digital books without taking the permission of publishers. Four of the major publishers including Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, John Wiley & Sons and Penguin Random House filed a lawsuit against the Archive in 2020 saying that it was illegally offering free copies of more than 100 books including those from writers like Toni Morrison and J.D. Salinger. 

A judge ruled in favour of the publishers in 2023 granting them a permanent injunction which was then sent to appeals court. The Archive responded to the ruling saying they were disappointed with the decision and would be reviewing the judgment. 

Nvidia did not receive subpoena from DOJ

AI chipmaker Nvidia said they did not receive a subpoena from the U.S. Justice Department as was reported a couple of days ago. The company has been under the antitrust scanner and the subpoena would indicate a definite escalation in the probe. However, the DOJ has been questioning tech companies around Nvidia’s business practices in the past few weeks especially CUDA, their hardware bundle.

The DOJ is also looking into an acquisition made by Nvidia of Israel-based Run:AI in April for $700 million. Nvidia’s dominance in the AI computing industry has become worrying since the AI boom has pushed prices of their Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) and the company’s valuation to a peak.