Former Google DeepMind researcher's AI startup raises record $1.1 billion seed funding to pursue superintelligence

david silver, a former lead of deepmind's reinforcement learning team and ucl professor, raised a record $1.1 billion seed round for his startup ineffable intelligence. the round, announced monday, values the months-old company at $5.1 billion — the largest seed round ever in europe, per the company. sequoia and lightspeed co-led the round. nvidia, dst global, index, google, and the u.k.'s sovereign ai fund also participated. ineffable intelligence focuses on reinforcement learning, where ai learns from experience rather than internet text. silver said the company aims to "transcend the greatest inventions in human history" and "make first contact with superintelligence." silver is one of several former big tech ai researchers launching their own labs. last week, recusive superintelligence — founded by former deepmind engineer tim rocktäschel — was reported raising up to $1 billion. ami labs raised $1 billion in march after yann lecun left meta. the u.k.'s science secretary liz kendall said the investment supports a company "at the very frontier of ai" and ensures the u.k. is "an ai maker."