David Silver is chasing superhuman intelligence with a $1bn seed

David Silver, a British AI researcher known for his role at Google’s DeepMind lab, has helped build some of the most influential AI systems and is now leading his own ambitious start-up. He is in the middle of raising a $1 billion seed round for his new London-based venture, Ineffable Intelligence.

If the fundraising will be completed, would be the largest seed round ever seen in Europe.

The round is being led by Sequoia Capital, with titans such as Nvidia, Google and Microsoft reportedly in talks to participate, according to industry sources familiar with the deal.

The proposed investment would place Ineffable Intelligence’s pre-money valuation at around $4 billion, an eye-watering figure for a company that hasn’t yet shipped a product.

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David Silver’s name is synonymous with some of the most memorable milestones in AI. During more than a decade at Google DeepMind, he helped develop AlphaGo, the first AI to defeat a world champion at the ancient game of Go, and later AlphaStar, which bested professional players in StarCraft II.

His work has shaped how modern AI systems learn and make decisions.

In late 2025, David Silver left DeepMind, where he also contributed to the development of the Gemini family of large language models, to launch Ineffable Intelligence. .

In the current days billion-dollar seed rounds are no longer unheard of, but they remain exceptionally rare, especially in Europe. 

If Sequoia and its partners follow through on their commitments, the round would serve as both a vote of confidence in David Silver’s vision and a broader signal that venture capitalists are increasingly willing to fund ambitious, research-driven AI ventures well before traditional product milestone

This could be a new chapter for European AI

The sheer size of the potential round also reshapes the narrative around Europe’s role in the global AI race.

Historically, most of the industry’s capital and rich technical talent have gravitated to Silicon Valley and other U.S. hubs. A £737 million-plus round led by a top U.S. investor shows that world-class AI ideas can still attract world-class capital in Europe.

David Silver’s dual role – as an entrepreneur and as a professor at University College London,  hints at a blend of academic ambition and commercial pressure that may define the next era of AI innovation.

His thesis suggests that the path to genuinely powerful AI may not be simply scaling up models, but teaching systems to learn and improve through real-world experience, a direction he believes could outpace approaches grounded solely in data accumulated from human interactions.

Whether Ineffable Intelligence ultimately delivers on its lofty vision remains to be seen.

But the enthusiasm around its fundraising reflects a broader trend: AI is entering a phase where conviction in founders and ideas can translate directly into unprecedented capital flows.

For Europe, a successful $1 billion cap table would be a milestone moment, not just financially, but symbolically,  in positioning the continent as a contender for the future of AI research and deployment.