AI 2026: Ilya Sutskever and the End of the Age of Scaling
The researcher who played a central role in developing ChatGPT now bets that new fundamental breakthroughs are still needed to unravel the mystery of intelligence.
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Ilya Sutskever is one of the world’s leading AI scientists. As of December 2025, he is the CEO of Safe Superintelligence (SSI), a startup he co-founded upon his departure from OpenAI in May 2024, where he was also a co-founder and worked for over eight years as Chief Scientist. Under his technical leadership, OpenAI, which began as a small non-profit, became the world’s leading generative AI company with a sizable lead over its competitors in both technology and paying user base, a lead it still retains today.