Sequoia Leads $1bn Silver Seed

What happened

Sequoia Capital leads a $1bn seed funding round for Ineffable Intelligence, a new AI research lab founded by David Silver. The investment values the startup at $4bn, marking Europe’s largest seed transaction. Silver, previously a lead researcher at Google DeepMind, uses the capital to establish a large-scale AI laboratory. This follows recent high-value AI investments including SoftBank’s £1.4B into Skild AI and Anthropic’s $20B funding round.

Why it matters

Venture capital partners and founders face a reset in seed-stage valuation benchmarks because this $4bn valuation establishes a new ceiling for European AI labs. Platform engineers and research leads gain a well-capitalised competitor for specialist talent, which increases recruitment costs. This transaction continues a pattern of massive capital concentration in foundational AI, following Skild AI’s £1.4B round and AMI Labs’ €3B target. Consequently, smaller startups face restricted access to top-tier compute and talent.