Former DeepMind Researcher David Silver Raises $1.1 Billion for Ineffable Intelligence at $5.1 Billion Valuation

David Silver, a central figure behind DeepMind's AlphaGo, founded Ineffable Intelligence and raised $1.1 billion in seed financing led by Sequoia Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners. Nvidia, Google, Index Ventures, and the British government also participated, valuing the London-based company at $5.1 billion.

The startup will focus on reinforcement learning (a method where AI agents learn through trial and error) to build a "superlearner"—an AI system that can teach itself without relying on human-generated data.

Ineffable Intelligence's funding round ranks among the largest for a newly formed AI lab. The company said in its mission statement that if successful, its work "will represent a scientific breakthrough of comparable magnitude to Darwin."