David Silver, a former head of reinforcement learning at Google DeepMind and a professor at University College London, has closed a $1.1 billion seed round for Ineffable Intelligence, his London-based AI startup, at a valuation of $5.1 billion.

This to join the race for novel AI models that could outperform large language models.

According to its newly launched site, Ineffable aims to create a “superlearner” capable of discovering knowledge and skills without relying on human data by leveraging reinforcement learning, a technique in which AI systems learn through trial and error rather than studying human-generated examples. Because this is Silver’s area of expertise.

A professor at University College London, Silver was until recently leading the reinforcement learning team at Google-owned DeepMind, where he spent more than a decade before leaving to found this new venture.

While at DeepMind, Silver was involved in developing programs that beat professional players at chess and the board game Go by learning purely from experience, without being fed human strategies or game records, defeating the world’s top computer programs in each game.

The most notable of these was AlphaZero, and this similarly, Ineffable Intelligence hopes that its superlearner will discover all knowledge from its own experience.

Its superlearner may lack experience, but the company doesn’t lack ambition. “If successful, this will represent a scientific breakthrough of comparable magnitude to Darwin: where his law explained all Life, our law will explain and build all Intelligence,” its site claims (capitals included).

Referring to Ineffable Intelligence as “his life’s work” in a personal note that he has since published on the company’s blog, Silver also told Wired that “any money that I make from Ineffable will go to high-impact charities that save as many lives as possible.”

While the financial success and timeline of Ineffable Intelligence remain to be seen, its fundraising efforts have been remarkably successful.

Reports indicate that the funding round was spearheaded by prominent venture capital firms Sequoia Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners.

Additional significant participation came from Index Ventures, tech giants Google and Nvidia, as well as the British Business Bank and Sovereign AI, the U.K.’s recently established sovereign venture fund for artificial intelligence.

Achieving “pentacorn” status so rapidly, a valuation exceeding $5 billion, Ineffable Intelligence joins an exclusive group of AI ventures founded by renowned researchers whose reputations have attracted exceptionally large seed funding rounds, humorously termed “coconut rounds.”

For instance, just last month, AMI Labs, co-founded by Turing Award winner and former Meta AI scientist Yann LeCun, secured $1.03 billion at a $3.5 billion pre-money valuation.

Another British-incorporated company, Recursive Superintelligence, co-founded by DeepMind’s former principal scientist Tim Rocktäschel, reportedly raised $500 million, with demand potentially pushing that figure to $1 billion.

These developments underscore a growing momentum around London as a burgeoning global AI hub.

This surge is partly attributable to DeepMind’s continued presence in the city since its acquisition by Google in 2014.

Beyond DeepMind, other major players are also contributing to London’s AI ecosystem, with reports indicating that Jeff Bezos’ AI lab, Project Prometheus, is in discussions to secure office space near Google’s AI hub. T

his concentration of talent and investment has also fostered a powerful network of alumni, with several former DeepMind staffers reportedly slated to join Ineffable’s executive team, further solidifying London’s position in the AI landscape.