Google DeepMind Alum's AI Startup Raises Record $1.1 Billion Seed to Pursue Superintelligence

Ineffable Intelligence has emerged from stealth after raising a $1.1 billion seed round, going public at a $5.1 billion valuation. The founder is David Silver, a former Google DeepMind reinforcement learning team leader and UCL professor, and the company was founded in late 2025.

The round was co-led by Sequoia and Lightspeed, with participation from Nvidia, DST Global, Index, Google, and the UK's Sovereign AI Fund, among others. The company stated it is focusing on reinforcement learning rather than internet text, aiming to build models that acquire knowledge on their own through experience.

Silver presented a goal that goes beyond language, science, mathematics, and technology, aiming for a superlearner that learns from its own experience, from basic motor skills to high-level discovery. Recently, funding has also been flowing into emerging AI labs such as Recursive Superintelligence, AMI Labs, Periodic Labs, and Humans&, and UK Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology Liz Kendall stated that this investment will help make the UK an AI producer rather than merely an AI consumer.