A former Google DeepMind researcher published on Monday a record $1.1 billion for his latest AI lab.

Ineffable Intelligence garnered backing from Sequoia, Lightspeed, Nvidia and Google, and emerged from stealth with a $5.1 billion valuation.

Silver is one of a number of former top researchers at Massive Tech companies who’ve jumped ship to launch their own AI labs in recent months.

A former top researcher at Google AI division DeepMind stated Monday a record $1.1 billion seed round for his months-old startup, Ineffable Intelligence.

The startup is pursuing superintelligence and was founded in late 2025 by UCL professor and former lead of DeepMind’s reinforcement learning team, David Silver. The seed round is the largest ever in Europe, amounting to a valuation of , according to the firm$5.1 billion.

The round was co-led by U.S. venture capitalists Sequoia and Lightspeed, with participation from Nvidia, DST Global, Index, Google and the U.K.’s Sovereign AI Fund, among others.

Ineffable Intelligence will focus on reinforcement learning, which is when artificial intelligence models learn from experience as opposed to human data. That compares with many leading AI models that are trained on internet text.

Silver stated the corporation is aiming to “transcend the greatest inventions in human history, such as language, science, mathematics and technology.”

“Our mission is to generate first contact with superintelligence,” noted Silver in a statement.

“We are creating a superlearner that discovers all knowledge from its own experience, from elementary motor skills through to profound intellectual breakthroughs,” he added.

Huge Tech talent exodus fuels startup boom

Silver is one of several former top researchers at Large Tech companies who’ve jumped ship to launch their own AI labs in recent months, with investors funneling billions of dollars into the ventures. This also touches on aspects of portfolio.

Last week, a months-old startup called Recursive Superintelligence — founded by former Google DeepMind engineer Tim Rocktäschel —In March, was reported by the Financial Times to be raising up to $1 billion. AMI Labs stated a $1 billion raise, months after its founder, Yann LeCun, revealed he was leaving his role as Meta’s AI chief.

In the past year, former staff at OpenAI, DeepMind, Anthropic and xAI have also raised hundreds of millions from investors for months-old ventures, including AI labs Periodic Labs and Humans&.

“This investment in Ineffable will support a organization at the very frontier of AI, with the potential to transform entire sectors, underlining our determination to ensure that the UK isn’t just an AI taker but an AI maker,” the U.K’s Science and Tech secretary, Liz Kendall, stated in a statement.