Quick answer
Ilya Sutskever's company portfolio is small and concentrated: Safe Superintelligence (SSI) — the $32 billion AI lab he co-founded in 2024 and leads as CEO; a legacy stake in OpenAI estimated at roughly $7 billion in 2026 court testimony; and his first company, DNNresearch (2012), acquired by Google in 2013. No side businesses, no venture portfolio of note, no real estate empire in the headlines — his entire business identity is three AI companies across fourteen years, each one a bet on deep learning at a bigger scale.
That concentration is the point. Sutskever is the purest "one thing" founder in AI: AlexNet → Google Brain → OpenAI → SSI. For how this turned into an estimated $7 billion fortune, see his net worth breakdown.
1. Safe Superintelligence Inc. — the $32 billion company (2024-present)
Role: Co-founder, CEO (since July 2025). Valuation: $32 billion (April 2025). SSI is Sutskever's company in every sense. Founded in June 2024 with Daniel Gross (ex-Apple AI chief) and Daniel Levy (ex-OpenAI), headquartered in Palo Alto and Tel Aviv, it runs on a single thesis: "We will pursue safe superintelligence with a singular focus on one goal and one product." No chatbots, no enterprise tools, no commercial products — research first, everything else later.
The funding is the most aggressive in AI history for a company with no product: $1 billion at $5 billion in September 2024 (Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz, DST Global, SV Angel), then $2 billion at $32 billion in April 2025 — a sixfold jump in seven months — led by Greenoaks ($500M) with Alphabet, Nvidia, a16z, DST Global, and Lightspeed participating. In July 2026, Nvidia invested another $5 billion in a strategic partnership with Vera Rubin GPU access, expanding SSI's compute tenfold.
The July 2025 transition cemented his control: Daniel Gross left for Meta (June 29, 2025), and Sutskever took the CEO seat on July 3, 2025. Founder, chief scientist, and now chief executive of a $32 billion lab — with the founder equity that implies, though his exact ownership percentage is undisclosed.
| Round | Amount | Valuation | Key investors |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sep 2024 | $1B | $5B | Sequoia, a16z, DST Global, SV Angel |
| Apr 2025 | $2B | $32B | Greenoaks (lead), Alphabet, Nvidia, a16z, Lightspeed |
| Jul 2026 | $5B | ~$32B (reported) | Nvidia (strategic, Vera Rubin access) |
2. OpenAI — the legacy stake (2015-2024, stake retained)
Role: Co-founder (2015), chief scientist (2015-2024), board member (until Nov 2023). Stake: ~$7 billion estimated (2026 court testimony). OpenAI is where Sutskever's wealth was made: a decade leading the research behind the GPT series, ChatGPT, DALL-E, CLIP, and the o1 reasoning models, plus the Superalignment team.
He departed in May 2024 after the November 2023 boardroom crisis — he voted to remove Sam Altman on November 17, reversed himself within days, signed the employee letter demanding Altman's return, and resigned from the board. Reports indicate he was marginalized afterward and had not returned to regular work. But equity outlives employment: the 2026 court testimony estimating his stake at roughly $7 billion suggests a significant legacy holding survived his departure. Whether he has sold any of it is not public.
3. DNNresearch — the Google acquisition (2012-2013)
Role: Co-founder. Exit: Acquired by Google, 2013 (price undisclosed). The forgotten first company. After AlexNet won ImageNet in 2012, Sutskever, Hinton, and Krizhevsky incorporated DNNresearch Inc. to commercialize the neural network work. Google bought it a year later, bringing all three founders into Google Brain, where Sutskever worked from 2013 to 2015 — co-developing seq2seq learning and contributing to TensorFlow.
DNNresearch was never a fortune-maker — the price was never disclosed and was almost certainly modest — but it was the career-maker: it converted a PhD student into a Google research scientist with an acquisition on his resume, setting up the OpenAI co-founder offer in 2015.
What he doesn't own: the anti-empire
Notably absent: there is no public record of Sutskever angel investing, running a family office, buying sports teams, or building a real estate portfolio — the usual billionaire side quests. His "portfolio" is three AI companies, and his public identity is entirely the research: Fellow of the Royal Society (2022), Time 100 AI (2023, 2024), three consecutive NeurIPS Test of Time Awards (2022-2024), and the 2026 National Academy of Sciences Award for Industrial Application of Science.
Even his philanthropy is quiet — no widely reported foundations or headline donations; his stated contribution to society is the work itself, safe superintelligence built deliberately. For the personal side he keeps private, see the FAQs in our money story — and for how his empire compares to a fellow safety-lab founder's, see Sutskever vs Dario Amodei.
Frequently asked questions
What companies does Ilya Sutskever own?
Ilya Sutskever's main company is Safe Superintelligence (SSI), which he co-founded in June 2024 and leads as CEO — valued at $32 billion after its April 2025 round. He also holds a legacy stake in OpenAI, estimated at roughly $7 billion in 2026 court testimony. His first company, DNNresearch (co-founded 2012 with Geoffrey Hinton and Alex Krizhevsky), was acquired by Google in 2013.
Is Ilya Sutskever the CEO of Safe Superintelligence?
Yes, since July 3, 2025. He co-founded SSI in June 2024 with Daniel Gross and Daniel Levy, initially as chief scientist, and took over as CEO after co-founder Daniel Gross departed for Meta's AI efforts on June 29, 2025. SSI is headquartered in Palo Alto and Tel Aviv.
Does Ilya Sutskever still own part of OpenAI?
That is not publicly confirmed. Court testimony in the Musk vs OpenAI case (2026) estimated his OpenAI stake at roughly $7 billion, suggesting he retained a significant legacy holding after departing in May 2024. OpenAI does not disclose its exact ownership structure, so the precise size of his remaining stake is unknown.
What happened to DNNresearch?
Google acquired DNNresearch in 2013 — one year after Sutskever, Hinton, and Krizhevsky founded it around the AlexNet breakthrough. The acquisition brought all three into Google Brain. The purchase price was not disclosed, but it converted Sutskever from an academic into a Google research scientist and gave him his first industry windfall.
Who are SSI's investors?
SSI's backers include Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, DST Global, and SV Angel (September 2024 round, $1B at $5B valuation); Greenoaks, which led the April 2025 round ($2B at $32B valuation) with a $500 million check; plus Alphabet, Nvidia, and Lightspeed. In July 2026, Nvidia added a $5 billion strategic investment with Vera Rubin GPU access.
Is Ilya Sutskever married?
There is no public information about whether Ilya Sutskever is married. He keeps his personal life entirely private — no public record names a spouse or children, and he does not discuss relationships in interviews or on social media.
How old is Ilya Sutskever in 2026?
Ilya Sutskever was born in 1986 in Gorky, Soviet Union (now Nizhny Novgorod, Russia), which makes him 39 or 40 in 2026. Some sources give his exact birthdate as December 8, 1986, while a few report 1985 — the year 1986 is the one point on which nearly all credible sources agree.
Where does Ilya Sutskever live?
His exact residence is not publicly disclosed. Safe Superintelligence is headquartered in Palo Alto, California, with a second office in Tel Aviv, and Sutskever is based in the San Francisco Bay Area for his work at the company. He is an Israeli-Canadian citizen who grew up in Jerusalem and later moved to Canada for university.