😸 We now know what Ilya saw

PLUS: AI agents build civilizations in Minecraft.

Welcome, humans.

Y’know how “Stage 3” of OpenAI’s AGI roadmap is “agents” that can spend days at a time tackling a task? Looks like we’re already there (in Minecraft, anyway):

A startup called Altera built multiple different simulations of fully autonomous “agent civilizations” in Minecraft, and shared their results on Reddit.

While the comments are full of doubters, the team behind the project is pretty impressive—headed up by former MIT, Stanford, and Berkeley folks.

If you have Minecraft, you can actually test the bots right now. Just pick an AI (e.g., Elon, Katniss, Spongebob), download the Altera launcher, and decide for yourself…

Here’s what you need to know about AI today:

Ilya Sutskever raised $1B for his new startup Safe Superintelligence Inc.
Claude launched “Enterprise” with 500K context, GitHub integration.
Two of the “Magnificent 7” want to build $125B+ data centers.
Lumen Orbit has developed its own space-based AI data center.

Advertise in The Neuron here.

Ilya’s “Safe Superintelligence, Inc.” just raised a billion dollars.

Remember the “What did Ilya see?” meme from late 2023? (As in, what did Ilya see that made him so urgent to fire Sam Altman?). We finally have the answer: a billion dollars.

That’s right—former OpenAI Chief Scientist, Ilya Sutskever, just raised $1B for his new AI research lab Safe Superintelligence Inc. (SSI).

The plan for the cash? Buy compute (from cloud providers and chip companies) and hire talent (right now, the team = 10 people).

A who’s who of major VCs all pitched in, from a16z to Sequoia to SV Angel, at a valuation reportedly around ~$5B.

Oh, and they’re hiring, in case anyone’s interested—they’re looking for “good character” folk who’re “interested in the work.”

X’s reaction?

“This is the silicon valley equivalent of ronaldo starting a yt channel and getting 20 million subscribers in one day.”
“MLE salaries go brrrrrrr”
“…the real flex is a website that looks like someone who just learned HTML made it, while also announcing a billion dollar raise.”

This funding proves the golden rule—when it comes to getting VC investments, it’s all about the team.

The hot tip: Ilya claims he's identified a “new mountain” to train on that’s “different” from what he was working on at OpenAI.

Why this matters: This is a billion dollar bet in the middle of a classic “trough of disillusionment” for the industry, with AI hype meeting reality, skittish investors, and (whether you want it or not) regulation imminent.

SSI is unique because it’s laser-focused on building safe superintelligence before any product launch. It’ll take this funding, do R&D for ~2 years, and then go-to-market.

If history is any guide, large models are trained every 1.5-2 years, so that’s about as long as Ilya would need to create something truly innovative.

GPT-4 was released in Q1 of 2023, but it finished training in Q3 of 2022. Similarly, Strawberry is done training, and now is in optimization mode.

Our take: Even though we’re right on the cusp of something big from OpenAI, the time between major releases has felt like FOREVER. Now that model providers are sharing them with the government, this next cycle could take even longer.

If it’s gonna be another ~2+ years before GPT-6 comes online, at least we’ll get to see these two frontier models (and former cofounders) showdown head-to-head in 2026.

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Around the Horn.

Claude launched Claude Enterprise, which allows organizations to securely collaborate with Claude using internal knowledge, with 500K context windows and GitHub integration for codebases.
At least two of the magnificent 7 (not including Tesla) have plans to build a $125B data center somewhere out in North Dakota.
Lumen Orbit is building AI data centers in space to use 24/7 solar and “passive cooling” (demo video here).
NVIDIA joined a $100M funding round for Sakana AI, a Tokyo startup developing efficient AI models with smaller datasets.

Treats To Try.

*Origin just rolled out AI automated workflows to help you analyze your investment, build a retirement plan, and create an emergency fund. Check them out here.
You.com is a search engine for complex queries that uses multiple agents to research, analyze, and synthesize information from multiple sources.(just raised $50M).
Remind captures your digital activity (locally on device) and uses it as an artificial memory to help recall tasks and optimize your workflow.
PicStudio takes your selfies and generates realistic portrait photos for social media and professional use.
Basejump allows you to chat with your database and access data insights quickly without needing to write complex queries.
GPT Builder Tools allows GPT creators to monetize their custom GPTs in the OpenAI Store by adding payment options (no code required).
Paradigm (just launched, waitlist only rn) automates data collection and analysis in spreadsheets by using agents to gather information from various online source (raised $2M).