Google DeepMind alumni startup partners with Nvidia to build superintelligence

Nvidia has unveiled a collaboration with a groundbreaking AI startup founded by a former expert from Google DeepMind, marking a significant step forward in the realm of artificial intelligence. Ineffable Intelligence, established in late 2025 by David Silver, a prominent UCL professor and the former leader of DeepMind's reinforcement learning division, is set to engage in an engineering partnership with the tech giant. The London-based startup, which focuses on achieving superintelligence, recently secured a remarkable $1.1 billion in seed funding, primarily backed by notable U.S. venture capital firms Sequoia and Lightspeed, along with contributions from Nvidia, DST Global, Index, Google, and the U.K.'s Sovereign AI Fund. Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, expressed enthusiasm about the partnership, stating, "The next frontier of AI is superlearners — systems that learn continuously from experience." He emphasized the importance of co-designing infrastructure for large-scale reinforcement learning, as Ineffable Intelligence seeks to advance AI technology and develop a new generation of intelligent systems. What sets Ineffable Intelligence apart from many existing AI models is its emphasis on reinforcement learning, where AI systems learn from their experiences rather than relying solely on human-generated data. The company indicated that their approach will require innovative model architectures and training algorithms, as the system will engage with forms of experience distinct from human language. Both Nvidia and Ineffable are committed to building a robust pipeline capable of scaling reinforcement learning systems, with engineers from both companies collaborating closely. The initiative will utilize Nvidia's advanced Grace Blackwell chips and the Vera Rubin platform. David Silver highlighted the challenge ahead, stating, "Researchers have largely solved the easier problem of AI: how to build systems that know all the things humans already know. But now we need to solve the harder problem of AI: how to build systems that discover new knowledge for themselves. That requires a very different approach — systems that learn from experience." Ineffable Intelligence joins a wave of new AI labs founded by former top researchers from major tech companies, with investors pouring billions into these ventures. On the same day, Recursive Superintelligence, established by ex-Google DeepMind engineer Tim Rocktäschel, announced it raised $650 million, underscoring the growing momentum in the field of AI innovation.