Ilya Sutskever Net Worth 2024: Cofounding OpenAI to Make $40 Million

Ilya Sutskever, a cofounder of ChatGPT’s creator OpenAI, is one of the most important people on the planet thanks to his pioneering work in artificial intelligence technology.

Born in Russia, Sutskever holds Israeli and Canadian citizenship. Sutskever has made world-changing contributions to AI research and has an estimated net worth of around $40 million in 2024.

Let’s dive into his career and net worth, exploring his life story to see what insights we can learn from Sutskever who is known for his many important contributions to deep learning and has recently left OpenAI to work on other ventures.

6 Fun Facts about Ilya Sutskever, Founder of OpenAI

1. Early Start: Attended the Open University of Israel at 14 and completed his Bachelor of Science at 19.
2. Influential Work: Co-authored the AlexNet paper, which revolutionized computer vision.
3. Tech Leader Recognition: Named in MIT Technology Review’s 35 Innovators Under 35 in 2015.
4. Philosophical Approach: Enjoys contemplating fundamental questions about intelligence and learning.
5. AI Safety Advocate: Strong proponent of developing safety guardrails for superintelligent AI.
6. Curiosity-Driven: Emphasizes curiosity as a driving force behind his work in AI research.

Ilya Sutskever’s Net Worth: Full Breakdown

Since most of Sutskever’s assets are held privately and not through a publicly traded company, calculating his exact net worth is impossible.

However, we have been able to collect plenty of public information surrounding his various sources of income, investments, assets, and business ventures to build a strong estimate, which we break down here for you.

Ilya Sutskever Net Worth: Early Life of an AI Titan

Ilya Sutskever was born on December 8, 1986, in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, before the Soviet Union collapsed. The family migrated to Israel when Sutskever was only five and he stayed there for the next 10 years.

Between 2000 and 2002, Sutskever attended the Open University of Israel and subsequently migrated to Canada with his family where he joined the University of Toronto in Ontario earning his Bachelor of Science in mathematics in 2005.

Sutskever received his Master of Science in computer science in 2007 and a PhD in computer science five years later.

Ilya Sutskever Net Worth: Early Career

In late 2012, Sutskever spent around two months as a postdoc with Andrew Ng who is among the luminaries in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning and has been advocating AI regulations.

Sutskever, meanwhile, soon returned to the University of Toronto and joined DNNResearch, a spinoff of Hinton’s research group.

Last week, I spoke about AI and regulations at an event at the U.S. Capitol attended by legislative and business leaders. I’m encouraged by the progress the open source community has made fending off regulations that would have stifled innovation. But opponents of open source are…

— Andrew Ng (@AndrewYNg) May 9, 2024

Sutskever spent around four months at DNNResearch before Google acquired the company and made him a research scientist at Google Brain – a position he held until December 2015. While at Google Brain, Sutskever was a key contributor to the development of the AlexNet neural network.

Ilya Sutskever Net Worth: Cofounding OpenAI

In January 2016, Sutskever joined OpenAI as a cofounder after he was cajoled by Elon Musk, another cofounder of the company. OpenAI has build a number of revolutionary AI models but it is best known for its ChatGPT chat bot, powered by a massive large language model (LLM).

According to Musk, it took a lot of back and forth before Sutskever eventually joined OpenAI and termed him the “lynchpin” of the company’s success.

Musk has since disassociated from OpenAI, criticizing it for its unprecedented shift from a nonprofit company developing open-source AI models to a (capped) forprofit company creating mostly proprietary models. Unfortunately for Musk, he gave the company tens of millions of dollars before this transition as a donation so he didn’t get equity in the company.

Perhaps fueled by spite or a fear of missing out, Musk started his own AI company, X.Ai.

Ilya Sutskever held the position of OpenAI’s Research Scientist between January 2016 and November 2018 and then transitioned to the role of Chief Scientist.

While Sam Altman is often given much of the credit and fanfare whenever OpenAI creates a great product, Sutskever and his team of developers are the ones actually building the AI.

Sutskever was among those who backed Sam Altman’s sacking as OpenAI’s CEO. This mistake quickly turned into a tornado of controvesy and chaos as most OpenAI employees threatened to quit if Altman wasn’t reinstated.

In just a few days, Altman was brought back as CEO and Sutskever apologized for participating in the board’s action to remove him.

I deeply regret my participation in the board's actions. I never intended to harm OpenAI. I love everything we've built together and I will do everything I can to reunite the company.

— Ilya Sutskever (@ilyasut) November 20, 2023

Ilya Sutskever Net Worth: Pioneering AI With Superalignment

Sutskever and his team have long been focused on the most difficult and important front of AI development: superalignment.

To put things simply, in AI parlance, alignment means building AI models that would just deliver what’s desired from them. However, when alignment is applied to superintelligence, we get what OpenAI calls “superalignment.”

Essentially, OpenAI (and everyone else) wants incredibly powerful AI models to act with humane intentions, goals, and values.

In an interview with MIT Technology Review, Sutskever termed superalignment an “unsolved problem” and said he’s doing it for “self-interest.”

“It’s obviously important that any superintelligence anyone builds does not go rogue. Obviously,” said Sutskever in the interview.

While the work on superalignment is still in its early days, Sutskever envisions the broad framework for the safeguards which the MIT Technology Review reported is “a machine that looks upon people the way parents look on their children.” According to Sutskever “It is a generally true statement that people really care about children.”

Notably, AI regulations have been a burning issue. Leading countries across the world are working on regulations to make AI safe. Even AI leaders like Elon Musk and Sam Altman are worried that the technology can go rogue.

Ilya Sutskever Net Worth: Moving On From OpenAI

On May 14, Ilya Sutskever announced that he was leaving OpenAI. While we don’t know the exact reasons why he left the company,  it seems likely that it has something to do with Altman’s sacking last year.

With Sam Altman returning back even more powerful than before, it’s not all that surprising that Sutskever would move on, despite his immense importance in the firm.

Reportedly, Sam Altman and Sutskever had differing opinions about how OpenAI should balance growth while ensuring AI stays safe for humanity.

While Altman wanted the company to make quick progress in its models, Sutskever believes that adequate safety guardrails should be a key priority so that AI does not become a risk to humanity.

Scott Aaronson, a computer scientist at the University of Texas at Austin, talked about his weekly calls with Sutskever in a podcast earlier this year. “I’d tell him about my progress…and he would say, ‘Well, that’s great, Scott, and you should keep working on that. But what we really want to know is how do you formalize what it means for the AI to love humanity?,” said Aaronson who is working on safety at OpenAI.

Commenting on him leaving OpenAI, Sutskever tweeted, “I am excited for what comes next — a project that is very personally meaningful to me about which I will share details in due time.”

Meanwhile, the timing of his departure raises eyebrows as it comes just a day after OpenAI launched a new AI model along with a desktop version of ChatGPT.

Ilya Sutskever’s Personal Life, Awards, and Accolades

Not much is known about Ilya Sutskever’s personal life. However, in the interview with MIT Technology Review, he remarked that while he does not have children, but wants to.

When it comes to professional life, Sutskever has received several awards and accolades predominantly for his contributions to artificial intelligence. Here are some of the awards that he has earned.

• Sutskever made it to MIT Technology Review’s 35 Innovators Under 35 in 2015
• He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2022
• He was one of the winners of the “test of time” award in 2023 which is given to authors of NeurIPS work from 10 years ago

What Can We Learn from Ilya Sutskever’s Life

There is a lot that we can learn from Ilya Sutskever who is a leading figure in artificial intelligence and has made significant contributions to AI research. Sutskever has enviable clarity of mind and is quite curious.

While he is working on advancing digital intelligence, he is quite vocal about doing it responsibly.

In a TED talk, he said, “I was simply curious about how intelligence works. And when I was a teenager, an early teenager in the late 90s, the sense that I got is that science simply did not know how intelligence worked.”

In an interview with the Guardian the publication aptly titled “Ilya: the AI scientist shaping the world” Sutskever talked about several aspects including what inspires him.

According to Sutskever, “I like thinking about the very fundamentals, the basics. What can our systems not do, that humans definitely do? Almost approach it philosophically. Questions like, what is learning What is experience? What is thinking? How does the brain work?” Sutskever agrees that curiosity is king when it comes to technological and personal development of all kinds.