unique Raised $50 million in seed round To fund the development of Faraday, an ambitious AI platform designed to completely redefine scientific method in the age of machine learning.
The mega seed round was co-led by two venture capital giants, Index Ventures and Radical Ventures, with occasional participation from Nventurers, the VC arm of NVIDIA. The underwriter list also includes an ensemble cast of deep tech and early-stage funds, including Ex/Ante, Metaplanet, Macroscope Ventures, and Mythos Ventures.
Rewriting the paradigm of 400 years ago
Inherent’s clear mission is to rethink the scientific method from first principles, rather than building software designed to slide into existing lab and research workflows. The startup focuses on what they call “AI native science.”
The lab is working on Faraday, a purpose-built AI system designed to generate new tasks rather than perform existing tasks faster. That is, to identify questions that people never thought to ask in the first place. Faraday’s architecture connects human experts to semi-autonomous agents that can self-reinforce and independently traverse hypothesis spaces that would take the human mind hundreds of years to assemble.
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“Most AI systems today are fundamentally designed to answer questions,” Danny Reimer, partner at Index Ventures, said in a statement accompanying the announcement. “What they still can’t do is demonstrate the boundless curiosity that led to historic, serendipitous breakthroughs like penicillin, microwaves, and even GPUs. That’s exactly the gap Inherent is building.”
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Genealogy of cutting-edge research and White House policy
Inherent’s massive seed-stage valuation is largely driven by a formidable founding team that combines elite technical expertise with deep regulatory insight. The startup was founded by DeepMind alumni Tantum Collins, Edward Hughes, and Louis Kirsch, and Kaloyan Aleksiev, a veteran infrastructure engineer who joined from Reka AI and Microsoft.
During their time at DeepMind, Collins and Hughes worked closely on collaborative AI, a subfield of machine learning focused on improving collaboration between multiple AI systems and humans. Beyond his technical qualifications, Mr. Collins brings rare geopolitical and policy experience to the Frontier Technology Institute, having previously served as an AI policy advisor in President Biden’s White House.
The team’s positioning has been further strengthened by the addition of Entrepreneur First co-founder and former UK government AI czar Matt Clifford to Inherent as an official strategic advisor.
These dual strengths in cutting-edge research and state-level policy make us uniquely positioned to navigate both academic institutions and the large government agencies that fund basic scientific discoveries.
Public interest structure as a strategy
In an unusual move for a heavily venture-backed frontier AI lab, Inherent launched as a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC). This legal framework requires the company’s board of directors to prioritize safety, transparency, ethical scientific advancement, and balance shareholder interests with a stated public interest charter.
Venture capitalists participating in the round see this corporate structure as a competitive advantage rather than a regulatory constraint. Index Ventures said in a blog post announcing the investment:
“AI-native science will look and feel very different from the scientific method we have been accustomed to for the past 400 years. It will be messier and harder to read, but it will yield better results. The lab of the future will be completely foreign to us today.”
By embedding governance metrics directly into the company’s DNA from day one, Inherent hopes to establish the ultimate baseline of trust needed to deploy highly autonomous, self-improving agents into sensitive real-world fields such as biochemistry, materials science, and advanced physics.
The $50 million runway gave the London lab the time it needed to move Faraday from a theoretical framework to groundbreaking peer-reviewed validation.
