Ilya’s SSI skyrockets to $32B

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. Former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever just reportedly raised one other massive round for his AI startup, Secure Superintelligence Inc. (SSI), catapulting its valuation to $32B in mere months.

But with no product in sight—only a daring vision for superintelligence and Sutskever’s status—is that this probably the most audacious bet yet within the AI funding frenzy, or a glimpse of Silicon Valley’s latest normal?

In today’s AI rundown:

• Ilya’s SSI raises $2B at $32B valuation

• Ex-OpenAI staff ward off on for-profit shift

• Construct an AI-powered lead outreach automation

• AI surpasses experts in tuberculosis diagnosis

• 4 latest AI tools & 4 job opportunities

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

SAFE SUPERINTELLIGENCE INC.

💰 Ilya’s SSI raises $2B at $32B valuation

The Rundown: Secure Superintelligence Inc. (SSI), co-founded by former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, just reportedly raised $2 billion at a post-money valuation of $32 billion, becoming one in every of the highest-valued startups just months after launch.

The small print:

• The $2B round has been led by Greenoaks (with $500M), with Lightspeed Enterprise Partners and Andreessen Horowitz in participation, FT reported.

• A separate report from Reuters noted that Alphabet and Nvidia are also backing SSI, though their investment amount stays undisclosed.

• The AI startup has been laser-focused on constructing “superintelligence” that goes beyond human-level AGI while ensuring “safety all the time stays ahead.”

• Previously, Sutskever told investors that the corporate has “identified a special mountain to climb,” hinting at a novel approach to AI development.

Why it matters: Even with no concrete product plan, SSI continues to rise, with its valuation growing sixfold since September 2024. The surge, alongside news of Mira Murati’s Considering Machines planning a raise, reflects growing investor interest in AI startups led by outstanding researchers, especially those emerging from OpenAI’s orbit.

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OPENAI

🙅 Ex-OpenAI staff ward off on for-profit shift

The Rundown: Twelve former OpenAI employees, who served in technical and leadership roles between 2018 and 2024, just filed a proposed amicus temporary supporting Elon Musk’s lawsuit difficult the AI lab’s shift away from its nonprofit origins.

The small print:

• The temporary makes the case that if OpenAI’s non-profit wing cedes its controlling stake in business, it could “fundamentally violate its mission statement.”

• It adds that OpenAI’s restructuring would also “breach the trust of employees, donors, and other stakeholders” who supported the lab for its mission.

• Todor Markov, who’s now at Anthropic, called Altman “an individual of low integrity” who used the charter merely as a “smoke screen” to draw talent.

• All of them noted the court should recognize maintaining the nonprofit is crucial to make sure AGI advantages humanity reasonably than serving narrow financial interests.”

Why it matters: If admitted to the court record, these testimonies from former insiders could strengthen Musk’s case ahead of the spring 2026 trial. OpenAI, for its part, says the non-profit stays intact and calls the changes a restructuring of its existing for-profit arm right into a public profit corporation while preserving the unique mission.

AI TRAINING

🤖 Construct an AI-powered lead outreach automation

The Rundown: On this tutorial, you’ll learn find out how to use Lindy AI’s latest loop feature to create an automatic system that researches prospects and drafts personalized emails at scale with zero manual effort.

Step-by-step:

1. Set your Lindy AI agent context by adding an outline like “You might be an outreach agent that has access to spreadsheets, researches leads, and drafts personalized emails”.

2. Create a workflow starting with “Message Received” trigger and an AI Agent configured to process spreadsheets of leads.

4. Finalize with an “Exit Loop” node and a summary AI Agent, then test your workflow with a sample spreadsheet.

Pro tip: The Rundown University members get 15% off Lindy Pro plans here.

PRESENTED BY WRITER

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The Rundown: Despite the excitement, agentic AI has struggled to deliver — until now. Author’s end-to-end platform finally makes agentic workflows real, effective, and scalable for enterprise.

On this product showcase, you will:

• Experience real agentic workflows live

• Hear success stories from beta testers

• Learn strategies to align your IT and business teams

Watch on demand and see the primary platform for end-to-end agentic AI in motion.

AI RESEARCH

🫁 AI surpasses experts in tuberculosis diagnosis

The Rundown: A brand new study led by Swiss researchers from Lausanne University Hospital demonstrated that AI can diagnose pulmonary tuberculosis with greater accuracy than human experts, exceeding WHO standards for non-sputum TB tests.

The small print:

• Presented at ESCMID Global 2025, the study introduced ULTR-AI, an AI system trained to read lung ultrasound images from smartphone-connected devices.

• The system uses a mix of three different models to merge image interpretation and pattern detection and optimize diagnosis accuracy.

• When tested on 504 patients (38% of whom had confirmed TB), it achieved 93% sensitivity and 81% specificity, beating human expert performance by 9%.

• The AI can discover subtle patterns that humans often miss, including small pleural lesions invisible to the naked eye.

Why it matters: With TB cases rising and diagnostics scarce or unaffordable in low-resource settings, this AI system could revolutionize triage by providing faster, cheaper, and scalable testing. And because it runs in real time through a smartphone app, even minimally trained healthcare staff can use it effectively in distant locations.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

• 🧠 Seed-Considering-v1.5 – ByteDance’s reasoning AI that beats Deepseek R1

• 🤖 AI HQ – Author’s end-to-end platform for constructing and supervising AI agents

• 🗣️ Amazon Nova Sonic – Amazon’s Speech-to-speech AI on Bedrock

• 📊 Gemini in Sheets – Access Google’s Gemini AI models in Google Sheets

💼 AI Job Opportunities

• ✍️ The Rundown – Course Copywriter/Designer

• 🧮 Curai – Revenue Operations Manager

• 📢 Anthropic – Head of Corporate Communications

• 🏛️ Palantir Technologies – Meritocracy Fellowship

📰 Every thing else in AI today

Meta’s unmodified, release version of Llama 4 Maverick appeared on LMArena, rating below months-old models, including Gemini 1.5 Pro and Claude 3.5 Sonnet.

DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis mentioned that the corporate plans to mix Gemini and Veo models right into a unified omni model with higher world understanding.

Netflix is reportedly working with OpenAI on a revamped search experience, allowing users to look up content using different latest parameters, including their mood.

OpenAI beefed up its security with a brand new Verified Organization status, which can be required to unlock API access to its advanced models and capabilities.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that the corporate plans to release an open-source model that might be “near the frontier.”

Elon Musk’s xAI began rolling out the memory feature to its Grok AI assistant, following an identical move from OpenAI last week.

COMMUNITY

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We just did a full workshop on n8n, where we teach you find out how to create your individual AI assistant that accelerates your workflow and helps you get more done, led by Dr. Alvaro Cintas, The Rundown’s AI professor.

Watch it here. Not a member? Join The Rundown University on a 14-day free trial.

See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, Alvaro, Jason, and Shubham —The Rundown’s editorial team