Former Google DeepMind scientist to raise $1 billion led by Sequoia for 'superhuman intelligence'

Former Google DeepMind scientist David Silver’s startup Ineffable Intelligence is reportedly close to raising $1 billion at a valuation of $4 billion. The funding is being led by Sequoia Capital and will be the largest ever seed round in Europe if it goes through, according to the Financial Times.

The company is working towards building what it calls ‘superhuman intelligence’.

Silver left Google DeepMind early this January, according to Fortune, to launch his London-based startup.


Per the FT report, negotiations are also underway for possible investments from Nvidia, Google, and Microsoft.

This is not the first time an AI startup has raised such a massive figure in its seed round. Thinking Machines Lab, led by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, raised $2 billion at a pre-money valuation of $10 billion. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), a venture capitalist firm, in 2025.

Silver, who helped build DeepMind’s AI system AlphaGo, is expected to build on his previous work around reinforcement learning (RL). RL is a form of training of AI systems through experience or interactions with their environment using a rewards mechanism.

AlphaGo was the system that mastered the famous Chinese game `Go’ and even defeated key players from South Korea and China. Silver was with DeepMind from 2010. The firm was eventually bought by Google in 2014.