OpenAI co‑founder Ilya Sutskever announced on July 3, 2025, that he is stepping into the CEO role at Safe Superintelligence (SSI), the AI startup he launched in mid‑2024. In a post on X, Sutskever confirmed that Daniel Gross, SSI’s co‑founder and CEO, officially left the company on June 29, 2025. Simultaneously, co‑founder Daniel Levy has been promoted to president, while Sutskever will continue to oversee the startup’s technical team alongside his new executive responsibilities.

The leadership shakeup comes amid intense industry jockeying for AI talent. Reports surfaced over recent weeks that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was in advanced talks to recruit Gross, as well as his longtime investing partner Nat Friedman, former CEO of GitHub. At one point, Zuckerberg even attempted to acquire all of SSI—most recently valued at $32 billion—to jump‑start Meta’s push into superintelligent systems. Sutskever directly addressed these overtures in his post, emphasizing SSI’s independence and singular focus on safe AI development.

“You might have heard rumors of companies looking to acquire us. We are flattered by their attention but are focused on seeing our work through,” Sutskever wrote. “We have the compute, we have the team, and we know what to do. Together we will keep building safe superintelligence.” His message underscored a commitment not just to technological breakthroughs, but to stewarding them responsibly—a nod to the “superalignment” ethos he championed at OpenAI.

Safe Superintelligence describes itself as the world’s “first straight‑shot SSI lab,” meaning it has no other products or divisions beyond its core mission of developing safe superintelligent AI. The company was founded on June 19, 2024, shortly after Sutskever departed OpenAI amid a boardroom clash over leadership and safety priorities. Since then, SSI has raised over $3 billion in funding across two rounds—$1 billion in September 2024 and another $2 billion in March 2025—underscoring investors’ confidence in its single‑minded approach.

Gross’s tenure as CEO may have been shorter than some expected, but he brought invaluable experience to SSI’s early days. A former Y Combinator partner, he previously founded Cue—an AI‑powered search startup acquired by Apple in 2013—after which he served as director of machine learning and AI at the iPhone maker. Gross also co‑founded the venture firm NFDG with Nat Friedman, backing high‑profile startups such as Perplexity and Figma before turning his sights to SSI.