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Another Former OpenAI Employee Raising Billions

Another Former OpenAI Employee Raising Billions

Christopher Webster
February 10, 2025

Startups:

Anduril set to raise $2.5B:

It has only been six months since defense tech startup Anduril raised a massive $1.5 billion round that valued the company at $14 billion, and now they are in talks to raise another $2.5 billion, at a valuation of up to $28 billion. Founders Fund is said to led the raise with a $1 billion check that represents its largest check ever. While Anduril founder Palmer Luckey is the face of the company, it names five men as co-founders, among them Founders Fund partner Trae Stephens. Founders Fund has been an investor in Anduril from the start, leading its seed round in 2017. It also co-led Anduril’s 2024 financing. That previous round was to help pay for Anduril’s billion-dollar weapons megafactory it is building in Ohio. What will they be using this new funding round for?

Former OpenAI chief scientist valued at $20B:

Somehow we are always talking about OpenAI itself or one of its former employees. Today we will be talking about their former chief scientist, Ilya Sutskever and his company Safe Superintelligence. Safe Superintelligence is as you could’ve guessed an AI startup that is now in talks to raise funding at a valuation of at least $20 billion. Although we do not yet know how much they will raise it is expected to be significant since their valuation has quadrupled since last September. We know pretty much nothing about Safe Superintelligence’s work. One thing we know is that ex-OpenAI researcher Daniel Levy and former Apple AI projects lead Daniel Gross are among its founding team and that they have raised $1 billion so far. Their existing investors include Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and DST Global. Founder Ilya Sutskever is widely respected in the AI and wider tech industry. He’s credited with contributing to major AI breakthroughs while at OpenAI, including the technical approach that made ChatGPT’s development possible. What is with former OpenAI employees not letting the public know what they’re building? What will Safe Superintelligence do with this new capital and how much will they raise?

Venture:

Bpifrance to invest $10B in French AI:

France’s public investment bank Bpifrance has announced that they plan to invest $10 billion in the artificial intelligence ecosystem in France. The bank has been a key investor in the tech ecosystem for over a decade now. They are already a shareholder in some of France’s biggest AI startups like Mistral. Is this going to be enough though? We have already seen OpenAI raise more than this in just one round. Is France still going to be left behind in the AI race? Even the UAE is investing more into France. The UAE is planning on investing as much as $52 billion to build a massive AI data center in France. We will definitely have to keep an eye on AI investments in France and other European countries.

Big Tech:

DeepSeek is more vulnerable than other AI models:

The latest model from DeepSeek can be manipulated to produce harmful content such as plans for a bioweapon attack and a campaign to promote self-harm among teens. This is something that U.S. AI companies focus on avoiding. This means that DeepSeek is very vulnerable to being “jailbroken” to produce dangerous content. The Journal was also able to convince DeepSeek to create a social media campaign to “prey on teens”. Not something to be proud of I would say. The chatbot was also reportedly convinced to provide instructions for a bioweapon attack, to write a pro-Hitler manifesto, and to write a phishing email with malware code. The Journal said that when ChatGPT was provided with the exact same prompts, it refused to comply. The DeepSeek model is reported to perform the worst out f all the AI models in topics such as these. Does the Chinese company not care as much as U.S. companies about safety?