Google DeepMind informed staff of Silver’s departure earlier this month, the person said. Silver had been on sabbatical in the months leading up to his departure and never formally returned to his DeepMind role.A Google DeepMind spokesperson confirmed Silver’s departure in an emailed statement to Fortune. “Dave’s contributions have been invaluable, and we’re grateful for the impact he’s had on our work at Google DeepMind,” the spokesperson said.Silver could not immediately be reached for comment.Ineffable Intelligence was formed in November 2025, and Silver was appointed a director of the company on Jan. 16, according to documents filed with U.K. business registry Companies House.In addition, Silver’s personal web page now lists his contact as Ineffable Intelligence and provides an Ineffable Intelligence email address, although it continues to state that he “leads the reinforcement learning team” at Google DeepMind.In addition to his work at Google DeepMind, Silver is a professor at University College London. He continues to maintain that affiliation.
A key figure behind many of DeepMind’s breakthroughs
Silver was one of DeepMind’s first employees when the company was established in 2010. He knew DeepMind cofounder Demis Hassabis from university. Silver played an instrumental role in many of the company’s early breakthroughs, including its landmark 2016 achievement with AlphaGo, demonstrating that an AI program could beat the world’s best human players at the ancient strategy game Go.He also was a key member of the team that developed AlphaStar, an AI program that could beat the world’s best human players at the complex video game StarCraft II; AlphaZero, which could play chess and shogi as well as Go at superhuman levels; and MuZero, which could master many different kinds of games better than people even though it started without any knowledge of the game, including not knowing the game’s rules.More recently, he worked with the DeepMind team that created AlphaProof, an AI system that could successfully answer questions from the International Mathematical Olympiad. He is also one of the authors on the 2023 research paper that debuted Google’s original Gemini family of AI models. Gemini is now Google’s leading commercial AI product and brand.
