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.
Latest news about Inherent
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Official website: https://inherentlabs.ai/