Inherent bets AI-native science needs new labs: ex-DeepMind team raises $50M

Inherent is a London-based AI lab founded by former DeepMind researchers Tantum Collins, Edward Hughes and Louis Kirsch, together with Kaloyan Aleksiev, who came from Reka AI and Microsoft. It emerged from stealth in May 2026 with a $50M seed led by Index Ventures with Radical Ventures participating, and describes its mission as writing 'the playbook for AI-native science': a system called Faraday, named after Michael Faraday, in which human researchers and self-improving AI work together on the hardest problems in science.

The founding bet is that most AI gives good answers but cannot figure out which questions are worth asking, and that machines capable of open-ended exploration can catalyze a new wave of inventions. Inherent's manifesto draws an analogy with steam-driven factories: electrification only paid off once the factory was redesigned, and AI-native science similarly needs institutions built from scratch. The company applies recursive self-improvement at the level of the whole lab and is a public benefit corporation, with a societal-benefit board to be announced.

Collins and Hughes first met researching cooperative AI at DeepMind, and Collins worked on AI policy at the Biden White House before co-founding. Matt Clifford CBE, co-founder of Entrepreneurs First and a former UK government AI adviser, is an advisor, and early hires and angels include technical-safety and democratic-AI specialists. The lab says how its humans and AI agents collaborate day to day is itself part of the research that informs Faraday.