Safe Superintelligence co-founder Ilya Sutskever is now CEO, taking over after Daniel Gross left the startup on June 29. Sutskever confirmed the leadership shakeup in a post on X, naming co-founder Daniel Levy as president.
The news follows reports that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was in talks to hire Gross and his investor-partner, former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman. At one point, Zuckerberg even tried to buy Safe Superintelligence outright. The startup was last valued at $32 billion.
Sutskever pushed back on acquisition rumors: 
“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,” said Sutskever. “We have the compute, we have the team, and we know what to do. Together we will keep building safe superintelligence.”
Ilya Sutskever (@ilyasut) July 3, 2025
Gross’ exit raises questions. If Safe Superintelligence is close to a breakthrough, why leave? Unlike Meta’s new AI efforts, which aim to power many products, Safe Superintelligence focuses solely on developing safe superintelligence—no side projects, no distractions.
Sutskever launched Safe Superintelligence after leaving OpenAI, where he was chief scientist and briefly involved in ousting then-CEO Sam Altman.
Meta’s AI push looks different. Zuckerberg’s new Meta Superintelligence Labs plans to build AI tools integrated with billions of users and hardware products. Gross, who led AI teams at Apple, could fit better into Meta’s established product framework. Zuckerberg is also hiring top talent from OpenAI and DeepMind.
Sutskever faces a new challenge running Safe Superintelligence as CEO. He’ll handle fundraising, talent recruitment, and overseeing the core technical team.
This leadership shuffle sets the stage for a fierce rivalry between tech’s AI labs focused on different missions—Safe Superintelligence’s laser focus on safety versus Meta’s broad AI product ambitions.
