British Business Bank and Sovereign AI invest into AI superintelligence company Ineffable Intelligence
Press release
The British Business Bank has invested $20m in Ineffable Intelligence, the UK-headquartered AI superintelligence company, as part of a $1.1bn seed funding round. The Bank has also worked with the Government’s Sovereign AI Fund, which is co-investing additional capital into Ineffable Intelligence, alongside the Bank’s $20m investment.
The Bank is joined by other investors including Sequioa, Lightspeed, NVIDIA, Index, Google, EQT, Evantic, Flying Fish, DST Global and BOND. The round represents the largest European seed round in history.
Ineffable Intelligence is led by David Silver, one of the world’s most prominent AI researchers and a professor at University College London. Silver is considered a global expert in reinforcement learning within AI, with extraordinary contributions including his role in AlphaGo, AlphaZero, AlphaFold and AlphaProof and when he led the reinforcement learning team at Google Deepmind. Silver launched Ineffable Intelligence to develop ‘superintelligence’ by building a superlearner that can discover all knowledge from its own experience.
This investment builds on the British Business Bank’s AI portfolio with nine investments made in AI in the last 12 months including recent investments in Wayve and PolyAI. It has also played a significant role in supporting the commercialisation of cutting-edge scientific research, having supported almost a quarter (24%) of university spinout deals between 2022-2024.
Charlotte Lawrence, Managing Director of Direct Equity, British Business Bank, said:
David Silver is a generational talent who has consistently been on the cutting edge of AI development. Ineffable Intelligence has the potential to produce a paradigm shift in our scientific and technology landscape, and we are incredibly excited to be supporting him and his team in this endeavour.
George Mills, Investment Director, British Business Bank, said:
Ineffable Intelligence is aiming to address one of the most significant opportunities within AI, superintelligence, which has the potential to open new frontier applications including in advanced problem solving and new product development with relevance across sectors. The UK produces world-class AI talent, and we are pleased to back strategically important businesses to scale and stay in the UK.
Josephine Kant, Head of Ventures at Sovereign AI, said
Very few founders in the world could credibly set out to build a superlearner - a system that discovers new knowledge from its own experience, rather than ours. David is one of them. From AlphaGo to AlphaZero to AlphaProof, he has spent nearly two decades turning reinforcement learning from a research idea into the results the rest of the field builds on. Ineffable is being built in the UK - and that matters.
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Notes to editors
About British Business Bank
The British Business Bank is the UK government’s economic development bank. Established in November 2014, its mission is to drive economic growth by helping smaller businesses get the finance they need to start, scale and stay in the UK. In doing so, we help capture the economic value of innovation for the UK and create jobs and prosperity for people across the country.
The British Business Bank’s core programmes support £23bnRead footnote text 1 of finance to almost 64,000Read footnote text 2 smaller businesses.
British Business Bank plc is a public limited company registered in England and Wales, registration number 08616013, registered office at Steel City House, West Street, Sheffield, S1 2GQ. It is a development bank wholly owned by HM Government. British Business Bank plc and its subsidiaries are not banking institutions and do not operate as such. With the exception of BBB Investment Services Limited they are not authorised or regulated by the Prudential Regulation Authority or the Financial Conduct Authority. BBB Investment Services Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. A complete legal structure chart for the group can be found at british-business-bank.co.uk.
The above investment is operated by British Patient Capital Limited, a wholly owned commercial subsidiary of British Business Bank plc. British Patient Capital Limited is registered in England and Wales with company number 11271076, and registered office at Steel City House, West Street, Sheffield, S1 2GQ. British Patient Capital makes commitments and invests on its own behalf and on behalf of third-party investors whose investments British Patient Capital manages.
The transaction described above does not constitute or imply any endorsement, warranty or recommendation by the UK government, the British Business Bank plc, its subsidiaries or any other party in respect of Ineffable Intelligence or its products or services.
For more about Ineffable Intelligence and its mission please visit ineffable.ai.
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1
Figures as at end March 2025
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2
Figures as at end March 2025, does not include Start Up Loans
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