Ineffable Intelligence raised $1.1 billion in seed at a $5.1 billion valuation to pursue superintelligence through reinforcement learning. The round exceeds prior European seed records and arrives from a pre-revenue research lab with no disclosed traction. Headquarters in London and founded in late 2025 position the company at the frontier of non-LLM AI architectures.
Sequoia Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners co-led the round, joined by Nvidia, DST Global, Index Ventures, Google, and the UK Sovereign AI Fund. [Source] reported on 2026-04-28. Use of funds targets reinforcement learning research and development to discover knowledge from its own experience rather than human data. No previous rounds or total raised to date have been disclosed.
David Silver’s Reinforcement Learning Superlearner
Ineffable Intelligence produces an AI superlearner that discovers knowledge from its own experience using reinforcement learning rather than human data. The company was founded in late 2025 by David Silver, UCL professor and former lead of DeepMind reinforcement learning, who spent 10+ years at DeepMind as a key contributor to AlphaZero. No traction metrics, ARR, MRR, users, or growth percentages are disclosed. No direct quote is provided in the source.
Recursive Superintelligence and AMI Labs Raise Comparison
Recursive Superintelligence hit up to $1 billion in fundraising reported in 2026, while AMI Labs announced $1 billion in March 2026 after its founder departed Meta as AI chief. Periodic Labs and Humans& have raised hundreds of millions in months-old ventures alongside former OpenAI, DeepMind, Anthropic, and xAI staff. Ineffable Intelligence reaches a $5.1 billion valuation compared to these peer raises within months of founding.
$1.1 Billion Deployed to Reinforcement Learning Research
Ineffable Intelligence plans to pursue superintelligence through reinforcement learning research and development targeting knowledge discovery from its own experience. Investor participation includes corporate venture from Google and Nvidia alongside sovereign and growth capital. The UK Science and Technology Secretary stated the investment supports a company at the AI frontier with potential to transform sectors and underscores the UK as an AI maker.
Ineffable Intelligence faces an unproven path to enterprise adoption without disclosed customers, revenue, or product timelines as it advances non-LLM architectures. The company enters a climate where top researcher talent commands premium valuations regardless of revenue traction, with capital concentrated on fundamental AI research outside established product cycles.
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![ComfyUI raised $30 million in Series A at a $500 million valuation, bringing total raised to $49 million across two formal rounds since its 2023 open-source launch in San Francisco. The round signals strong enterprise appetite for deterministic, human-in-the-loop AI tools even as foundation models rapidly improve. Craft Ventures led the round, joined by Pace Capital, Chemistry, and TruArrow. [Source] reported on 2026-04-25. Use of funds was not explicitly stated in the article, leaving deployment priorities and timeline undisclosed for the San Francisco-based startup founded in 2023. ##Yoland Yan's ComfyUI workflow enables granular AI media control## ComfyUI is a node-based workflow tool that gives creators granular control over image, video, and audio outputs from diffusion models. The project began as an open-source effort in 2023 shortly after diffusion models emerged, when outputs from systems like Midjourney and DALL-E frequently contained major errors such as extra fingers on hands. ComfyUI now claims over 4 million users, with creative professionals, technical artists, VFX studios, animation teams, advertising agencies, and industrial designers adopting the tool. Yoland Yan, co-founder and CEO, said, "If you think about your typical prompt-based solution, like Midjourney or ChatGPT, you ask for something, it [gets only] 60% – 80% there. But to change that remaining 20%, you have to try this slot machine." ##ComfyUI vs. Figma's Weavy: acquisitions vs. $500M independence## Figma acquired Weavy, an AI-powered media generation startup, in 2025, while ComfyUI achieved a $500 million valuation in 2026. The comparison underscores a divergence between consolidation through acquisition and standalone growth for specialized control layers in AI generation. ComfyUI cites a growing job-market signal, with "ComfyUI artist or engineer" appearing on studio job boards as a recognized role for technical creators who require precision beyond prompt boxes. ##Human-in-the-loop control captures eyeballs as AI slop spreads## ComfyUI stated that AI slop proliferation elevates demand for human-in-the-loop workflows that preserve creator intent across image, video, and audio outputs. The company plans to maintain its node-based approach as diffusion models improve, betting that granular control will capture sustained attention in a landscape of commoditized foundation models. ##Control precision wins as generative AI becomes commoditized## ComfyUI faces competitive pressure from acquired and bundled alternatives as studios seek integrated pipelines, yet it retains an installed base of 4 million users who prioritize deterministic editing over prompt-driven variance. The startup asserts that its workflow remains necessary for professional-grade outputs where small, precise changes must not overwrite prior work, positioning the company to serve high-stakes creative and industrial applications that reject casino-like generation loops.](https://krolmarc.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/1777146812623-019dc633-e9f2-7670-a8ea-5d04486ca31f-768x419.png)