A former top researcher at Google’s AI arm DeepMind announced a record $1.1 billion seed round for his months-old startup Ineffable Intelligence on Monday.
The startup pursues superintelligence and was founded in late 2025 by David Silver, a UCL professor and former leader of DeepMind’s reinforcement learning team. The company says the seed round is the largest in European history, at a valuation of $5.1 billion.
The round was co-led by US venture capitalists Sequoia and Lightspeed, with participation from the following companies: Nvidia,DST Global ,Index, google such as the UK’s Sovereign AI Fund.
Ineffable Intelligence focuses on reinforcement learning, where AI models learn from experience rather than human data. This compares to many leading AI models that are trained on internet text.
Silver said the company aims to “exceed the greatest inventions in human history: language, science, mathematics and technology.”
“Our mission is to make first contact with superintelligence,” Silver said in a statement.
“We are developing super-learners who discover everything from their own experiences, from elementary motor skills to deep intellectual advances,” he added.
Outflow of big tech talent accelerates startup boom
Silver is one of the former top researchers at Big Tech, whose investors have poured billions of dollars into the venture and which has been launching its own AI labs in recent months.
Last week, the Financial Times reported that Recursive Superintelligence, a months-old startup founded by former Google DeepMind engineer Tim Rocktäschel, has raised up to $1 billion. AMI Labs announced a $1 billion raise in March, months after founder Yann LeCun announced he was stepping down. metaHead of AI.
Over the past year, former staffers from OpenAI, DeepMind, Anthropic, and xAI have also raised hundreds of millions of dollars from investors in months-old ventures, including AI research labs Periodic Labs and Humans&.
“This investment in Ineffable will support companies at the forefront of AI, which has the potential to transform entire sectors, and underlines our determination to ensure the UK is an AI maker, not just an AI taker,” UK Science and Technology Secretary Liz Kendall said in a statement.
