Inherent exits stealth with $50M seed to build AI-native science lab

Inherent, a London-based AI lab founded by alumni of DeepMind, Microsoft, and the White House, has emerged from stealth with a $50 million seed funding round to build AI systems for open-ended scientific discovery. The company is developing Faraday, an AI platform designed to act as an AI-native science engine, combining human scientific research with autonomous AI agents to generate new knowledge and inventions. The $50 million raise is one of Europe’s largest stealth-to-launch AI seed rounds in 2026, giving the company substantial resources at inception to scale its technical and research teams.

The seed round is co-led by Index Ventures and Radical Ventures, with participation from NVentures, Ex/Ante, Metaplanet, Macroscopic Ventures, Mythos Ventures, and several prominent angel investors. Early backers and advisors include experts in AI safety and policy, notably former UK government AI adviser and Entrepreneurs First cofounder Matt Clifford, who is advising the company. Inherent positions itself at the intersection of AI and scientific R&D, aiming to rethink how scientific discovery is conducted in the era of large-scale AI systems. By focusing on self-improving AI agents optimized for hypothesis generation and experimentation rather than traditional question-answering, the lab is targeting a role as a core infrastructure player for future scientific innovation.