Professor David Silver, the computer scientist behind AlphaGo, has raised $1.1 billion in seed funding for his new venture Ineffable Intelligence, one of the largest seed rounds in European history.
The company, which Silver founded after working for more than a decade at Google DeepMind, focuses on building AI systems that learn from experience rather than human-generated data.
UCL Computer Science announced the funding on LinkedIn, describing Silver as a “leading figure in modern AI” and acknowledging his continued role as a professor in the department.
Silver’s reinforcement learning track record
At Google DeepMind, Mr. Silver led the development of AlphaGo, the first AI system to defeat a world Go champion, as well as AlphaZero and AlphaStar. Both of these demonstrated the potential of self-learning approaches across a variety of domains. Ineffable Intelligence is a direct extension of that research trajectory, applying reinforcement learning principles on a much larger scale.
The company’s mission is to create what it calls “super learners” who can discover knowledge entirely from their own experiences, from basic motor skills to what the company calls “deep intellectual breakthroughs.” Silver said the system is expected to “rediscover and surpass the greatest inventions in human history, including language, science, mathematics, and technology.”
In a blog post on the company’s website, Silver wrote: “The world needs a place where the ambitions of the reinforcement learning paradigm can be realized to its fullest extent, where we confront head-on the deep questions of intelligence: how to discover new knowledge from experience in the environment.”
Professor Daniel Alexander, Head of UCL’s Department of Computer Science, said: “This milestone highlights the need for basic research and the role universities like UCL have to play in early ideas that lead to world-changing technologies. It also reflects the strength of UCL’s research community, which is generating ideas, talent and leadership at the forefront of one of the most important technological transformations of our time.”
Superintelligence timeline over several years
Ineffable Intelligence has published a set of guiding beliefs, including the assertion that superintelligence “can be built within years, not decades or centuries,” and that the knowledge it acquires “will be so profound that it cannot be explained in human language.” The company actively hires researchers and engineers, which Silver describes as a window through which “ambitious research can grow without bowing to the demands of product increments and short-term profits.”
Ineffable Intelligence invests $1.1 billion in a seed-stage AI company focused solely on reinforcement learning rather than generative models, entering a market where the overwhelming majority of investment is going to large-scale language models. Silver’s team has already hired researchers and engineers, and the company is positioning itself as a long-term research bet unconstrained by short-term product demand.
