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\t\tFormer Google DeepMind researcher David Silver has raised $1.1bn\t<\/p>\n\t\t\tMonday 27 April 2026 4:29 pm\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\tFormer Google DeepMind researcher David Silver has raised $1.1bn\t<\/p>\n
An ex-Google DeepMind researcher has secured one of Europe\u2019s largest AI funding rounds, as investors race to back a new generation of frontier labs beyond large language models (LLMs).<\/p>\n
David Silver has raised $1.1bn (\u00a3880m) for his London-based startup Ineffable Intelligence at a valuation of $5.1bn, in a round led by Sequoia Capital <\/a>and Lightspeed Venture Partners, with backing from Nvidia, Google and Index Ventures.<\/p>\n The deal has been secured amid growing investor appetite for so-called \u201cneolabs\u201d, AI startups founded by leading researchers aiming to push beyond current models into more advanced forms of machine intelligence.<\/p>\n Silver, who has also been shortlisted for entrepreneur of the year at the City AM <\/a>Awards<\/a>, is one of several high-profile figures leaving established labs to launch independent ventures.<\/p>\n \u2018Beyond Chatgpt\u2019<\/p>\n His new company is focused on reinforcement learning, a method where AI systems learn through trial and error rather than relying on large datasets of human-generated content.<\/p>\n \u201cHuman data is like a kind of fossil fuel that has provided an amazing shortcut,\u201d Silver said. \u201cYou can think of systems that learn for themselves as a renewable fuel \u2013 something that can just learn and learn and learn forever.\u201d<\/p>\n This approach contrasts with the dominant strategy behind models such as ChatGPT and Gemini, which are trained on vast amounts of human text.<\/p>\n \u201cI think of our mission as making first contact with superintelligence,\u201d Silver said, adding that such systems could eventually \u201cdiscover new forms of science or technology or government or economics for itself.\u201d<\/p>\n The startup plans to develop \u2018superlearners\u2019, which are AI agents trained in simulated environments capable of developing new capabilities independently of human input.<\/p>\n Ravi Mhatre, partner at Lightspeed, said Silver\u2019s career \u201cis basically a single, coherent argument for being able to scale intelligence without human priors.\u201d<\/p>\n Sonya Huang, partner at Sequoia, added: \u201cThere\u2019s only a very, very small number \u2013 less than a handful of people \u2013 who have done truly foundational work. Dave [Silver] is one of them.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\tRead more<\/p>\n