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Inherent

Category: AI Agents

London AI lab founded by DeepMind alumni building Faraday, a recursively self-improving AI agent for scientific discovery. Inherent was founded in 2025. The company is led by Tantum Collins. Based in London, United Kingdom. Team size: 11-50. Total funding raised: $50M. Latest round: Seed. Key investors include Index Ventures, Radical Ventures.

Founded
2025
Headquarters
London, United Kingdom
Team size
11-50
Total funding
$50M

Value proposition

General-purpose inventive AI that accelerates scientific research and powers next-generation autonomous labs, pairing AI 'teammates' with human scientists to replicate and generate new research.

Products and solutions

Faraday — an AI research agent capable of reproducing published scientific research and assisting in open-ended scientific discovery, built as part of a self-improving AI-native research lab.

Unique value

Faraday, built on a comparatively small 27B-parameter model (Qwen 3.6-based), reportedly outperformed much larger frontier models (Claude Opus 4.8, GPT-5.5) at reproducing published research — demonstrating capability efficiency over raw scale.

Target customer

R&D teams, research institutions, and scientific organizations across domains (pharma, materials science, biotech, etc.)

Industries served

Scientific R&D, drug discovery, materials science, general scientific research automation

Technology advantage

Recursive self-improvement approach applied at the institutional/organizational level, not just the model level; team of DeepMind alumni with deep RL/multi-agent research background; incorporated as a Public Benefit Corporation to prioritize research integrity alongside commercial goals.

How they differentiate

Focuses on redesigning R&D organizational workflows around AI-native processes rather than bolting AI onto legacy lab structures; emphasizes small, efficient models (Faraday's 27B parameters) beating larger frontier LLMs on scientific reproduction benchmarks.

Main competitors

Sakana AI, FutureHouse, Periodic Labs

Major milestones

Emerged from stealth May 2026 with $50M seed, released Faraday AI research agent August 2026, claiming it outperformed Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.8 and OpenAI's GPT-5.5 at reproducing published scientific research, advised by Matt Clifford (Entrepreneurs First co-founder, UK government AI advisor).

Growth metrics

~12 employees at time of stealth emergence (May 2026), plans to grow to ~20-30; Faraday agent released publicly ~August 2026 claiming benchmark outperformance vs Claude Opus 4.8 and GPT-5.5 on research replication tasks.

Market positioning

Early-stage but high-profile challenger in the emerging 'AI Scientist' / AI-for-science category, positioned against both well-funded frontier labs (via specialized agents) and dedicated science-AI startups.

Geographic focus

Global, with primary base in UK/Europe competing against both US (Periodic Labs, FutureHouse) and Japan-based (Sakana AI) rivals.

About Tantum Collins

AI research, governance & organizational design since 2016; Director for Technology and National Security at the White House; five years at Google DeepMind prior to that; co-founded Inherent in 2025.

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