![](\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/img-assets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/98228cda-dcbe-47b2-8cd8-c804478c5e6c-e1788773107488.jpg?w=2048\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Ineffable Intelligence, the London-based AI startup launched earlier this year by ex-Google DeepMind AI researcher David Silver, has brought on six high-profile \u201ccofounders.\u201d<\/p>\n
Four of the new Ineffable hires are former Google DeepMind colleagues of Silver\u2019s: Chris Apps, Wojciech Czarnecki, Lasse Espeholt, and Junhyuk Oh. Apps, Czarnecki, and Oh worked with Silver on DeepMind\u2019s 2019 AlphaStar breakthrough. AlphaStar was an AI system that could beat the world\u2019s best human players at the competitive, real-time strategy video game Starcraft II. Meanwhile, Espeholt helped build Google\u2019s MetNet weather prediction AI models.<\/p>\n
The fifth cofounder, Alexandre Laterre, was formerly the head of research at London-based AI company InstaDeep, which was acquired by biotech company BioNTech in 2023. The sixth, Heather Gorham, had been a partner at the venture capital firm Flying Fish, which was among the first investors in Ineffable.<\/p>\n
All six cofounders recently updated their LinkedIn profiles to reflect their new roles. Ineffable confirmed the hires, but declined to comment further.<\/p>\n
In April, Ineffable was valued at $5 billion when it raised a $1.1 billion seed round of venture capital funding, the largest seed investment ever in Europe.<\/p>\n
Ineffable’s hiring spree adds to the wave of high-profile researchers who have recently left Google DeepMind to join rival AI companies and contributed to a perception that DeepMind, which was the first company to make the creation of AI models that could rival or exceed human intelligence its primary mission, is now struggling.<\/p>\n
When Ineffable was incorporated in November 2025, records at U.K. business registry Companies House show that the company was set up by George \u201cGeordie\u201d Rose, a Canadian serial entrepreneur and tech investor. Silver only became a company director in January 2026, after he officially left DeepMind. Companies House records show that one month later, Rose was no longer a \u201cperson with significant control\u201d of Ineffable\u2019s shares, and he stepped down as a director in July. Rose\u2019s LinkedIn profile and his web page list his as a \u201cfounding advisor\u201d to the company. A company spokesperson said that Rose is a friend of Silver\u2019s who helped him get the company up and running before moving into an advisory role, but that Silver does not consider him a \u201ccofounder.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ineffable is one of the so-called \u201cneolabs\u201d\u2014the next generation of frontier AI companies that have been launched in the past two years, many started by veterans of the three older generation of companies whose goal was the creation of advanced artificial intelligence: Google DeepMind, OpenAI, and Anthropic. Besides Ineffable, the neolabs include Thinking Machines Labs, cofounded by former OpenAI chief technology officer Mira Murati, and Safe Superintelligence, cofounded by former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, as well as Sakana AI, Recursive Superintelligence, Core Automation, and Adaption Labs, among others.<\/p>\n
Like other so-called \u201cneolabs,\u201d Ineffable\u2019s stated mission is to create AI superintelligence. But Ineffable is committed to getting there using reinforcement learning, the AI training technique with which Silver is closely associated. In reinforcement learning, an AI model learns, by trial and error, to maximize a reward that the person training the model establishes. It is somewhat similar to the idea of operant conditioning in psychology. Actions that lead to rewards get reinforced, while agents learn not to repeat those that don\u2019t.<\/p>\n
Oh, who will run reinforcement learning at Ineffable, was the reinforcement learning lead on DeepMind\u2019s AlphaStar work. In 2025, he also was one of the first researchers to use AI to discover new reinforcement learning algorithms. Using AI to help automate AI research itself is a major focus among the frontier AI companies. Many are pushing towards \u201crecursive self-improvement,\u201d or RSI, a moment in which AI systems can autonomously optimize future versions of themselves with little to no human help. Oh\u2019s hiring suggests that Ineffable will also be looking to use automated reinforcement learning research to accelerate its quest for superintelligence.<\/p>\n
At DeepMind, Czarnecki focused on multi-agent research, or scenarios in which multiple AI agents have to learn to either cooperate or compete on various tasks. He worked on AlphaStar too, as well as on DeepMind\u2019s work on teams of AI agents that had to learn how to work together to beat other AI agents in the capture-the-flag version of the video game Quake III Arena. This involved competing in simulated games of capture the flag held inside complex, three-dimensional virtual worlds. At Ineffable, Czarnecki will oversee the startup\u2019s science team.<\/p>\n
Apps was a technical program and research delivery lead at Google DeepMind. In essence, he helped project manage the large teams of researchers needed to deliver many of the company\u2019s breakthroughs. Before DeepMind, he helped run technology transformation programs at Barclays bank and Deloitte. He will lead \u201cmission acceleration\u201d at Ineffable.<\/p>\n
Espeholt will be in charge of Ineffable\u2019s \u201ccompute, infrastructure, and engineering strategy,\u201d according to his LinkedIn profile, while Laterre will oversee research engineering.<\/p>\n
Gorham is working on Ineffable\u2019s \u201ccompute, fundraising, and operations,\u201d according to her LinkedIn profile. As a partner at Flying Fish, she had approached Silver in early 2024 to learn more about new approaches to reinforcement learning and to lay the groundwork for Flying Fish getting in on the ground floor if Silver ever decided to leave DeepMind and start his own company, according to a story in GeekWire<\/em>. Her efforts paid off, allowing Flying Fish to write the first check for Silver\u2019s new company and to play a role in its mega seed round, which was led by Sequoia and Lightspeed Ventures. She also helped secure Ineffable\u2019s partnership for computing power with Google Cloud, which was announced in July.<\/p>\n Clarification, September 7: <\/strong>This story has been updated to clarify the nature of the capture-the-flag games Czarnecki<\/em> worked on while at DeepMind.<\/em><\/p>\n This story was originally featured on Fortune.com<\/p>\n #Exclusive #Ineffable #Intelligence #adds #cofounders #hiring #veterans #Google #DeepMind #InstaDeep #venture #firm #Flying #Fish<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ineffable Intelligence, the Lo… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4022,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2625,6911,2195,2106,808,6913,193,636,1259,6910,6912,5325,3100,5712],"class_list":["post-4021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance-news","tag-adds","tag-cofounders","tag-deepmind","tag-exclusive","tag-firm","tag-fish","tag-flying","tag-google","tag-hiring","tag-ineffable","tag-instadeep","tag-intelligence","tag-venture","tag-veterans"],"yoast_head":"\n