New AI startup Ineffable Intelligence reportedly raising $1B funding round

Ineffable Intelligence Ltd., a startup led by former Google DeepMind principal research scientist David Silver, is reportedly raising $1 billion in funding.

The Financial Times on Tuesday cited sources as saying that Sequoia Capital is leading the round. DeepMind parent Alphabet Inc., Nvidia Corp. and Microsoft Corp. could reportedly chip in as well. It’s believed that the round will value Ineffable Intelligence at $4 billion.

The London-based startup doesn’t have a product yet. It was founded last November by Silver, who reportedly left DeepMind around the same time. During his tenure at the Alphabet unit, he led the development of reinforcement learning technologies for several high-profile AI projects. Ineffable Intelligence reportedly plans to build on that work as part of its research efforts.

One of the DeepMind projects that Silver helped lead is AlphaGo, an AI model trained to play the Go board game. The algorithm made computer science history in 2016 when it beat the world’s top player. In 2018, Silver’s team launched an upgraded version of AlphaGo called AlphaZero that was also adept at chess and shogi.

Both AlphaGo and AlphaZero were trained using reinforcement learning. A team that included Silver also used the technique to train AlphaStar, an AI model optimized to play a video game called “StarCraft II.” The algorithm represented a notable research milestone because “StarCraft II” doesn’t give players full information about the state of a match, which makes it more difficult than Go in certain respects.

The core concept behind reinforcement learning is to train AI models through trial and error. During a reinforcement learning run, a neural network is given a set of training prompts to process. Its response to each prompt is then compared with a prepared, correct answer. If the AI model answers a question incorrectly, it receives feedback that helps it improve.

During Silver’s tenure at DeepMind, the Alphabet unit developed not only new ways of applying reinforcement learning but also enhancements to the technology’s theoretical foundations. 

Reinforcement learning uses an algorithm called a loss function to orchestrate the AI training workflow. Last year, DeepMind detailed a new approach to loss function development called DiscoRL. It replaces traditional loss function algorithms with a neural network that can improve itself over time with the help of AI agents. According to Google, DiscoRL outperforms many earlier alternatives.

It’s unclear which reinforcement learning approaches Ineffable Intelligence plans to use or what tasks it will seek to automate with its products. However, the fact that Google and Microsoft are reportedly considering investing hint that the company’s software won’t directly compete with their offerings.

Ineffable Intelligence wouldn’t be the first pre-product AI startup to raise a 10-figure funding round. Thinking Machines Lab Inc., a company led by former OpenAI Group PBC Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati, raised a $2 billion seed round several months before launching its Tinker AI fine-tuning service. Safe Superintelligence Inc. earlier closed a $2 billion investment at a $32 billion valuation.

Image: Unsplash

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