When Jumia came to Nigeria, among all the things it did, it scaled the mission of digital commerce at scale. Yes, most of the early workers in Jumia left and started amazing things. That explains my pain when big tech companies like Microsoft and Meta started shrinking the production components of their Nigerian operations. See it this way, if Microsoft has kept that innovation center, many will work there, and over time, depart to create something great.
OpenAI is a great company. And OpenAI is already seeding an industry as some of the staff depart to pursue orthogonal visions within the generative AI industry. Yes, “Ilya Sutskever, co-founder of OpenAI and one of the most esteemed AI researchers globally, has launched a new start-up named Safe Superintelligence (SSI) Inc.”
That adds to Dario Amode, another ex-OpenAI, and founder of Anthropic: “SSI is not the first significant spin-off from OpenAI. In 2021, Dario Amodei, formerly head of AI safety at OpenAI, founded Anthropic, a start-up committed to developing safe AI systems. Anthropic has since secured $4 billion in funding from Amazon and hundreds of millions more from venture capitalists, achieving a valuation exceeding $18 billion.”
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In the Igbo Nation, you do not stay in one place to watch the big masquerade. AI is the masquerade, and the players are moving around. This playground is super-exciting because AI will power the future!
Ilya Sutskever, I like the vision of SSI, and have emailed that Tekedia Capital wants to put $1million. I hope we can get a YES from you. We can close tomorrow.
OpenAI Co-Founder Ilya Sutskever Launches Rival AI Start-Up Focused on Safe Superintelligence
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