DeepMind's David Silver Lands $1.1B for AI That Needs No Human Data

Ineffable Intelligence, a British artificial intelligence lab established just a few months ago by former DeepMind researcher David Silver, has successfully secured $1.1 billion in funding. This significant investment values the company at $5.1 billion, propelling it into the competitive arena of developing groundbreaking AI models designed to surpass the capabilities of existing large language models.

According to its recently launched website, Ineffable's primary objective is to create a "superlearner" capable of independently discovering knowledge and acquiring skills without relying on human-generated data. This ambitious goal will be achieved by leveraging reinforcement learning—a technique where AI systems learn through a process of trial and error rather than from studying pre-existing human examples. This methodology is a core area of Silver's expertise.

Silver, who also holds a professorship at University College London, previously spent over a decade at Google-owned DeepMind. Until recently, he led the reinforcement learning team there before departing to establish this new venture.

During his tenure at DeepMind, Silver was instrumental in developing programs that famously defeated professional players in games like chess and Go. These programs, including the renowned AlphaZero, learned purely from experience without being explicitly fed human strategies or game records, ultimately triumphing over the world's top computer programs in each game. In a similar vein, Ineffable Intelligence harbors the aspiration that its "superlearner" will discover all knowledge through its own self-generated experience.

While the concept of a "superlearner" may imply a lack of inherent experience, the company itself is not short on ambition. Its website boldly states, "If successful, this will represent a scientific breakthrough of comparable magnitude to Darwin: where his law explained all Life, our law will explain and build all Intelligence," highlighting the profound impact they envision.

In a personal note subsequently published on the company’s blog, Silver referred to Ineffable Intelligence as “his life’s work.” He also informed Wired that “any money that I make from Ineffable will go to high-impact charities that save as many lives as possible,” signaling a philanthropic commitment.

The precise mechanisms, timeline, or extent of the venture's future revenue generation remain undefined. However, this lack of clarity has evidently not hindered its remarkable fundraising success.

As reported by Wired, the funding round was spearheaded by Sequoia Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners. Additional participation came from notable investors including Index Ventures, Google, Nvidia, the British Business Bank, and Sovereign AI, the U.K.’s recently launched sovereign venture fund dedicated to artificial intelligence.

Achieving "pentacorn" status, signifying a valuation exceeding $5 billion, Ineffable Intelligence now joins an elite group of AI ventures founded by prominent researchers. These companies have attracted initial funding rounds so substantial they have been humorously dubbed "coconut rounds"—a playful escalation of the traditional "seed" round. This trend was recently exemplified by AMI Labs, co-founded by Turing Award winner and former Meta AI scientist Yann LeCun, which last month raised $1.03 billion at a $3.5 billion pre-money valuation.

The emergence of more companies following this model seems likely. Recursive Superintelligence, co-founded by DeepMind's former principal scientist Tim Rocktäschel and incorporated in the U.K., reportedly secured $500 million in funding, with investor demand suggesting potential for that amount to stretch to $1 billion.

While Recursive Superintelligence also maintains ties to the U.S., these companies collectively signal a growing momentum around London as a leading AI hub. This is partly due to DeepMind's continued presence in the city following its acquisition by Google in 2014. However, the influence extends beyond DeepMind, with reports indicating that Jeff Bezos’ AI lab, Project Prometheus, is currently in discussions to secure office space in close proximity to Google’s AI hub in London.

This vibrant ecosystem also fosters a powerful network of alumni, with several former DeepMind staffers reportedly poised to join Ineffable Intelligence’s executive team, further consolidating expertise within the burgeoning company.