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The Last A.I. Chopper Out of Saigon?

With the specter of the A.I. singularity around the corner, Ineffable Intelligence just raised a billion-dollar seed round without a single product. The investment arms race is putting massive pressure on venture capital—and changing how the entire industry thinks about risk.

David Silver
Four months after David Silver set out on his own, Ineffable Intelligence announced $1.1 billion in seed funding at a $5.1 billion valuation. Not bad for a company whose only asset was its founder’s brain. Photo: Noam Galai/Getty Images for Tribeca Film Festival
Ian Krietzberg
May 7, 2026

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Earlier this year, researcher David Silver left Google DeepMind to launch his own company: Ineffable Intelligence, a London-based startup that’s on a mission to make “first contact with superintelligence.” Silver didn’t have a product, or presumably even a prototype, but he did have a great résumé: more than a decade at one of the world’s leading A.I. labs, where he worked with Demis Hassabis to create AlphaGo and AlphaZero.