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Safe to Say Former OpenAI Employees Are Doing Well For Themselves

Safe to Say Former OpenAI Employees Are Doing Well For Themselves

Christopher Webster
February 19, 2025

Startups:

Factory machine repair:

AI is being implemented into every single industry. The biggest one might be robotics, but Augury is combining the two in a way I have not seen before. They are using AI to identify when factory machines need repairs, as well as what’s wrong with the machines. They do this by measuring the machines vibrations, sound, temperature, and other factors. The startups just raised $75 million for a Series F round. The round is not closed as they would like to raise a total of $100 million. However, the new round will value the company at over $1 billion. They plan to use the money to further develop their tech as well as to bring on more customers. What surprising ways are companies using AI that we would not expect?

Former CTO of OpenAI finally announces startup:

Mira Murati, the former CTO of OpenAI has finally brought her startup out of stealth (that just means she’s telling the public what it is and what it does). Bet you could’ve guessed it was an AI startup. If you did you’re right! What’s the name? The name of the startup is Thinking Machines Lab; that one roles off the tongue smooth. Now, what do they do? The company intends to build tooling to “make AI work for people’s unique needs and goals, and to create AI systems that are more widely understood, customizable, and generally capable”. So, make AI better, I guess. The company was in talks to raise $100 million, but we still have yet to see if this is true or not. Will Mira’s company be a critical company in the AI era?

Safe to say former OpenAI employees are doing well:

Another former OpenAI employee created their own AI company. As we have discussed before Safe Superintelligence is an AI startup founded by former OpenAI chief scientist, Ilya Sutskever. The newest news for the company is they are close to raising $1 billion at a $30 billion valuation. A much crazier valuation then when we talked about them last. Greenoaks Capital Partners is leading the round and pledging to invest half a billion dollars. Yeah, you’re right. That’s a lot of money! This would bring Safe’s total raise to $2 billion. Wanna hear the craziest part of the story? The company hasn’t even generated a single dollar of revenue! Are we crazy or are the venture capitalist crazy? Probably a little bit of both.

Venture:

Venture firm hacked:

Insight Partners is a U.S.-based venture capital firm that recently confirmed that they were hacked in January. Their systems were breached through a “sophisticated social engineering attack”. This is a huge deal since the firm has more than $90 billion in assets under management. The slightly funny part is that the firm is invested in top cybersecurity companies like Armis and Wiz. Insight hasn’t disclosed if any data has been stolen or what the intention of the hackers was. Will we see more hacks on venture firms?

Big Tech:

OpenAI on the defense:

OpenAI now has to defend themselves from a takeover from Elon Musk after his bid to buy the nonprofit arm of the company for $97.4 billion. How are they going to do this? Well one plan they are considering is giving its nonprofit board special voting rights. The voting rights would allow the board to overrule major investors in the company. Oh that’s definitely gonna piss some people off. This might be the biggest corporate world fight we will see in our lifetimes. Elon Musk vs. Sam Altman. Who will come on top as the winner?