Exclusive: Ineffable Intelligence adds six ‘cofounders,’ hiring veterans from Google DeepMind, InstaDeep and venture firm Flying Fish

London-based AI startup Ineffable Intelligence recently announced the addition of six high-profile "cofounders" to its team. Four of these individuals were previously affiliated with Google DeepMind: Chris Apps, Wojciech Czarnecki, Lasse Espeholt, and Junhyuk Oh. Apps, Czarnecki, and Oh collaborated with Ineffable's co-founder David Silver on DeepMind's 2019 AlphaStar breakthrough, a system capable of defeating world-class human players in the real-time strategy game Starcraft II.

Meanwhile, Espeholt contributed to Google's MetNet weather prediction AI models. Alexandre Laterre, the fifth cofounder, had led research at InstaDeep, an AI company acquired by biotech firm BioNTech in 2023. Heather Gorham, the sixth cofounder, previously served as a partner at venture capital firm Flying Fish, which was among Ineffable's earliest investors.

All six cofounders confirmed their new roles on LinkedIn, although Ineffable declined to provide further comment. In April, Ineffable was valued at $5 billion following a $1.1 billion seed round of venture capital funding, marking the largest seed investment in European history. The surge in high-profile talent leaving DeepMind to join rival AI companies has fueled speculation about DeepMind's current struggles, which was initially driven by its ambitious goal of creating AI models that could match or surpass human intelligence.

Ineffable's leadership team includes experts in reinforcement learning, a key training technique in AI research. Apps oversees mission acceleration, Espeholt focuses on compute, infrastructure, and engineering strategy, and Laterre manages research engineering. Gorham handles fundraising and operations. Ineffable is part of a new wave of frontier AI companies, dubbed "neolabs," which have emerged in recent years, many led by veterans from the original AI pioneers like DeepMind, OpenAI, and Anthropic.

Ineffable's mission aligns with that of these other neolabs, which aims to develop AI superintelligence using reinforcement learning.