Podcast Episode
His departure marks the end of an era at the London-based AI lab, where Silver led some of the most celebrated breakthroughs in the field. Most famously, he spearheaded the development of AlphaGo, the AI system that shocked the world in 2016 by defeating world champion Lee Sedol at the ancient board game Go, a feat many experts believed was decades away.
The company's mission is ambitious: to build what Silver describes as an endlessly learning superintelligence that self-discovers the foundations of all knowledge. Silver has long argued that large language models are fundamentally limited because they learn from human-generated data. He believes true superintelligence requires AI systems that can figure things out for themselves and discover knowledge that humans have never possessed.
His achievements earned him the 2019 ACM Prize in Computing and election as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2021. He maintains his professorship at University College London.
AlphaGo Creator David Silver Leaves Google DeepMind to Chase Superintelligence
January 31, 2026
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David Silver, the mastermind behind AlphaGo and other groundbreaking AI systems, has departed Google DeepMind after nearly fifteen years to launch his own startup called Ineffable Intelligence. The London-based company aims to build superintelligent AI using reinforcement learning methods.
A Founding Figure Departs
David Silver, one of the most influential figures in modern artificial intelligence, has left Google DeepMind to pursue his own vision of superintelligence. Silver was among the very first hires when DeepMind was founded in 2010, having known co-founder Demis Hassabis from their university days.His departure marks the end of an era at the London-based AI lab, where Silver led some of the most celebrated breakthroughs in the field. Most famously, he spearheaded the development of AlphaGo, the AI system that shocked the world in 2016 by defeating world champion Lee Sedol at the ancient board game Go, a feat many experts believed was decades away.
Building Ineffable Intelligence
Silver's new venture, Ineffable Intelligence, was quietly registered in November 2025, with Silver appointed as a director in mid-January. The startup is actively recruiting top AI researchers and seeking venture capital funding.The company's mission is ambitious: to build what Silver describes as an endlessly learning superintelligence that self-discovers the foundations of all knowledge. Silver has long argued that large language models are fundamentally limited because they learn from human-generated data. He believes true superintelligence requires AI systems that can figure things out for themselves and discover knowledge that humans have never possessed.
A Distinguished Legacy
Silver's contributions to AI extend far beyond AlphaGo. He led the development of AlphaZero, which achieved superhuman performance in chess, shogi, and Go purely through self-play, requiring no human knowledge whatsoever. He also worked on AlphaStar, which mastered the complex real-time strategy game StarCraft 2, and more recently AlphaProof, which achieved silver-medal performance at the 2024 International Mathematical Olympiad.His achievements earned him the 2019 ACM Prize in Computing and election as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2021. He maintains his professorship at University College London.
The Superintelligence Race Intensifies
Silver joins a growing exodus of elite researchers leaving established labs to pursue superintelligence independently. Ilya Sutskever's Safe Superintelligence has raised three billion dollars at a valuation exceeding thirty billion. Former DeepMind colleagues have founded Reflection AI, now valued at eight billion dollars. Meta has reorganised its entire AI division under a new Superintelligence Labs. The race to build AI systems smarter than humans has never been more competitive.Published January 31, 2026 at 12:14am
