DeepMind’s David Silver just raised $1.1B to build an AI that learns without human data

Unspeakable intelligencea British AI laboratory founded just a few months ago by former DeepMind researcher David Silver has put forward $1.1 billion in financing at a $5.1 billion valuation to join the race for new AI models that could outperform large language models.

According to the newly launched site, Ineffable aims to create a “super learner” capable of discovering knowledge and skills without relying on human data, using reinforcement learning – a technique in which AI systems learn through trial and error rather than studying human-generated examples. This is Silver’s area of ​​expertise.

Until recently, Silver was a professor at University College London lead the strengthening learning team at Google-owned DeepMind, where he spent more than a decade before leaving to start this new venture.

While at DeepMind, Silver was involved in developing programs that beat professional players at chess and the board game Go games, learning purely from experience, without being given human strategies or playing records – beating the world’s best computer programs at every game. The most notable of these was AlphaZero. In the same way, Ineffable Intelligence hopes that the super learner will discover all knowledge through his own experience.

The super student may lack experience, but the company does not lack ambition. “If successful, this will represent a scientific breakthrough on par with Darwin’s: where his law explained all life, our law will explain and build all intelligence,” the site claims (including all caps).

Silver refers to unspeakable intelligence as “his life’s work” in a personal note he has since published on the company’s blog. told Wired that “all the money I make from Ineffable goes to high-impact charities that save as many lives as possible.”

It is unclear how, when and how much the venture will generate, but this has clearly not hampered fundraising.

According to Wired, the round was led by Sequoia Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from Index Ventures, Google, Nvidia and others. Among those other investors are the British Business Bank and sovereign AIthe recently launched UK AI venture capital fund.

Fast forward to so-called pentacorn status—that is, companies valued at more than $5 billion—Ineffable Intelligence joins the club of AI ventures founded by star researchers whose names have attracted seed rounds so large that they’ve been nicknamed coconut rounds (an ironic escalation of the ‘seed’ round). Just last month, AMI Labs, co-founded by Turing Award winner and former Meta AI scientist Yann LeCun, raised $1.03 billion at a pre-money valuation of $3.5 billion.

There could be more companies in this model. Recursive Superintelligence, co-founded by DeepMind’s former chief scientist Tim Rocktäschel and founded in Great Britain, reportedly raised $500 millionwith enough demand to stretch that figure to $1 billion.

While Recursive also has ties to the US, these companies suggest that momentum around London as an AI hub is increasing. This is partly due to DeepMind’s continued presence after its acquisition by Google in 2014. But it’s not just DeepMind. Jeff Bezos’ AI lab, Project Prometheus, is reportedly in conversation to secure office space nearby Google’s AI hub.

This also translates into a powerful alumni network, with several former DeepMind staffers reportedly set to join Ineffable’s executive team.