DeepMind's David Silver just raised $1.1B to build an AI that learns without human data

TLDR

• Former DeepMind researcher David Silver raised $1.1B for Ineffable Intelligence, a UK lab building AI that learns without human data.

Key Facts

• Ineffable Intelligence closed a $1.1B round at a $5.1B valuation, led by Sequoia Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners.
• Investors include Index Ventures, Google, Nvidia, the British Business Bank, and the UK’s Sovereign AI fund.
• Silver spent over a decade at DeepMind, where he helped build AlphaZero, which learned chess and Go from pure experience.
• Ineffable aims to build a “superlearner” using reinforcement learning to discover knowledge without relying on human-generated data.

Why It Matters

• AlphaZero’s co-architect is now applying the same human-data-free approach to general intelligence, not just board games.
• The round adds to a cluster of large UK AI raises from ex-DeepMind founders, reinforcing London’s position as a research hub.

Anna Heim, TechCrunch · 2026-04-27 · Read the original