Ineffable Intelligence Hires 6 Cofounders From Google DeepMind in Major Talent Acquisition

Ineffable Intelligence Names Six New Cofounders

David Silver's Ineffable Intelligence has quietly added six cofounders to its roster, all confirmed through LinkedIn profile updates1

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. The AI startup, valued at $5 billion after raising a $1.1 billion seed round in April—the largest seed funding in Europe—has brought on four researchers from Google DeepMind, one from InstaDeep, and one from venture firm Flying Fish2

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. Fortune reported the hires as an exclusive, though Ineffable Intelligence declined further comment1

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The four Google DeepMind veterans are Chris Apps, Wojciech Czarnecki, Lasse Espeholt, and Junhyuk Oh1

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. Alexandre Laterre joins from InstaDeep, the London company acquired by BioNTech in 2023, where he led research1

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. Heather Gorham comes from Flying Fish, one of Ineffable's earliest backers1

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. The company is ten months old and has no product yet1

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Reassembling the AlphaStar Team for Reinforcement Learning

Three of the new hires—Apps, Czarnecki, and Oh—worked directly with David Silver on AlphaStar, the system that reached grandmaster level at StarCraft II in 20191

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. This hiring pattern reveals Ineffable Intelligence is not building a general-purpose research staff but rather reconstructing a specific team from a specific era of DeepMind, before the lab reorganized around shipping Gemini1

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Junhyuk Oh will run reinforcement learning at Ineffable Intelligence, bringing critical expertise in automated AI research2

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. In October 2025, Oh co-authored a Nature paper with Silver demonstrating DiscoRL, a machine learning system that discovered a new reinforcement learning rule rather than relying on hand-designed algorithms1

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. The system beat every existing rule on the Atari benchmark1

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. The paper suggested agents may soon find algorithms for advanced AI themselves through experience, a concept closely tied to recursive self-improvement that every frontier lab is now pursuing1

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Wojciech Czarnecki will oversee Ineffable's science team, bringing his expertise in multi-agent research from AlphaStar and DeepMind's work on AI agents learning to cooperate or compete in simulated capture-the-flag games2

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. Apps, who served as technical program and research delivery lead at Google DeepMind, will lead mission acceleration2

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. Espeholt, who built weather models on Google's MetNet, will handle compute, infrastructure, and engineering strategy2

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. Laterre will oversee research engineering2

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The Push Toward AI Superintelligence

Ineffable Intelligence positions itself among the "neolabs"—next-generation frontier AI companies launched by veterans from Google DeepMind, OpenAI, and Anthropic2

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. Other neolabs include Thinking Machines Labs, Safe Superintelligence, Sakana AI, and Recursive Superintelligence, which raised $650 million in May1

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David Silver argues that large language models cannot reach AI superintelligence because they only recombine what humans have already written1

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. His answer is reinforcement learning: agents that learn by acting inside simulated worlds and discovering things no human documented1

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. Ineffable raised its $1.1 billion seed round on this thesis, led by Sequoia and Lightspeed Ventures2

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From Investor to Cofounder

Heather Gorham's transition from Flying Fish partner to Ineffable cofounder stands out as the most unusual hire1

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. She approached Silver in early 2024 after he published a paper arguing that knowledge drawn from human data was nearing its ceiling1

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. Flying Fish wrote the first check roughly two years later1

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. Managing director Frank Chang told GeekWire the firm had spent years building relationships in London's ex-DeepMind circle, partly through its 2020 investment in Seattle startup Phaidra1

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. Gorham now manages compute, fundraising, and operations at Ineffable Intelligence and helped secure the Google Cloud deal announced in July1

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Exodus of Senior Talent from Google DeepMind

The hires underscore a troubling trend for Google DeepMind, which has been losing senior researchers throughout the year1

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. Zeki Data, a UK analysis firm, found that DeepMind's share of research and advanced-engineering hires across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa dropped from 49% in 2022-2023 to 18.6% in 2025-20261

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. The ratio of arrivals to departures in those roles fell from roughly 12-to-1 in mid-2023 to about 2-to-1 this quarter1

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. Chief scientist Jeff Dean, Oriol Vinyals, and Quoc Le all left on the same afternoon in August1

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. Google DeepMind did not respond to Fortune's request for comment1

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While DeepMind still hires more researchers globally than it loses, and Zeki's analysis undercounts by relying on public information, the trend signals a perception that DeepMind is struggling despite being the first company to make AI superintelligence its primary mission1

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The Cofounder Question

Companies House records show Canadian entrepreneur George Rose incorporated Ineffable Intelligence in November 20251

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. Silver became a director in January 2026, after officially leaving DeepMind2

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. One month later, Rose was no longer a person with significant control of Ineffable's shares, and he stepped down as director in July2

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. A company spokesperson said Rose is a friend of Silver's who helped get the company running before moving into an advisory role, but Silver does not consider him a cofounder2

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. Rose's LinkedIn profile lists him as a founding advisor2

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. The six new hires received the cofounder title despite joining an AI startup that is ten months old1

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