Ilya Sutskever taps Google Cloud to power his AI startup’s research

OpenAI co-founder and former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever’s new AI startup, Safe Superintelligence (SSI), is using Google Cloud’s TPU chips to power its AI research, part of a new partnership the companies announced on Wednesday in a press release. Google Cloud says SSI is using TPUs to “accelerate its research and development efforts toward building a safe, superintelligent AI.” Cloud providers are chasing a handful of unicorn AI startups that spend hundreds of millions of dollars on computing power every year to train AI foundation models. SSI’s deal with Google Cloud suggests the former will spend a large chunk of its computing budget with Google Cloud; a source familiar tells TechCrunch that Google Cloud is SSI’s primary computing provider. Google Cloud has a history of striking computing deals with its former AI researchers, many of whom are now running billion-dollar AI startups. (Sutskever once worked at Google.) In October, Google Cloud said it would be the primary computi ... Read full article.