Ineffable Intelligence, founded by former DeepMind researcher David Silver, raises $1.1 billion at $5.1 billion valuation to build AI that learns without human data

Ineffable Intelligence, a British AI lab founded by David Silver (former reinforcement learning team lead at DeepMind), raised $1.1 billion in funding at a valuation of $5.1 billion. The round was led by Sequoia Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from Index Ventures, Google, Nvidia, the British Business Bank, and Sovereign AI.

The company aims to create a 'superlearner' capable of discovering knowledge and skills without relying on human data by leveraging reinforcement learning—a technique in which AI systems learn through trial and error rather than studying human-generated examples. Silver previously led development of AlphaZero at DeepMind, which defeated world computer programs at chess and Go by learning purely from experience.

Ineffable Intelligence joins the club of AI ventures valued at more than $5 billion (pentacorn status) founded by star researchers. The company's launch reflects mounting momentum around London as an AI hub, partly due to DeepMind's continued presence after its acquisition by Google in 2014.