These AI Barons Are Ready to Give Away Their Fortunes
AI researcher Demis Hassabis-colleague Demis Silver has launched a new startup, Ineffable Intelligence, with a $1.1 billion seed round. He has pledged to donate all future proceeds from the company's sale to charity, joining a growing trend of AI-focused techno-philanthropy.
Why it matters
This highlights the increasing concentration of wealth in the AI sector and the rise of a new class of founders attempting to influence global outcomes through massive charitable pledges.
Between 2013 and 2025, Silver worked as a researcher at Google DeepMind. He specialized in reinforcement learning, a method of teaching an AI model through positive and negative feedback. In 2016, he led the development of AlphaGo, which became the first AI to defeat a human champion in the game of Go and was heralded as a narrow form of superintelligence. Silver left to start Ineffable Intelligence in January, betting that reinforcement learning breakthroughs will close the gap between human and machine cognition across the board.
When he started Ineffable Intelligence, Silver raised $1.1 billion from investors at a $5.1 billion valuation, reportedly the largest seed round in Europe’s history. He also vowed to donate all the money he makes from any future sale of his company to charity.
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