Ineffable Intelligence raises $1.1B seed at $5.1B valuation

A post on X reported that Ineffable Intelligence raised a $1.1B seed round at a $5.1B valuation. The company was founded by David Silver of DeepMind, who was one of the people behind AlphaGo. The investors in the round are Sequoia, Lightspeed, Nvidia and Google. The post noted that the funding round was at the seed stage rather than a later round such as Series C. It said the money arrived before the company had a product, revenue or any customers. According to the post, this reflects what early-stage venture capital on the AI frontier has become. Investors are not paying for metrics since none exist yet. Instead they are paying for the team and a bet on a particular research approach. The post added that founder reputation has become an asset that can be used to raise capital. The post offered two possible readings of such valuations. A nervous reading suggests that capital is overheated and that pre-product valuations of this size indicate a bubble. A calm reading suggests that the entry price at the frontier is now so high that only world-class teams can compete there. This leaves other participants to focus on the application layer.