London-based AI startup Inherent, founded by alumni of Google DeepMind, has unveiled an AI agent named Faraday that has outperformed larger models from Anthropic and OpenAI at reproducing scientific research findings independently. This achievement comes shortly after Inherent's emergence from stealth mode with a $50 million seed funding round. Faraday's task was to replicate the results of published scientific papers without prior knowledge of the answers, a challenging benchmark that mirrors early scientific training practices.

The standout aspect of Faraday’s performance is that it operates on a much smaller model, Qwen 3.6, which has 27 billion parameters, compared to bigger models like Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.8 and OpenAI’s GPT-5.5. This parameter count is a proxy for model complexity and training cost, illustrating Inherent's efficient use of resources. Beyond mere replication accuracy, Inherent emphasized Faraday’s ability to show "research taste," an AI instinct to identify worthwhile experiments and design them well, achieved using reinforcement learning techniques.

Inherent’s approach focuses less on training models specifically with scientific procedural knowledge but instead aims to teach generalizable curiosity and judgment in scientific exploration. Their vision is to develop AI agents that collaborate with human researchers, not just provide answers, by autonomously investigating hypotheses and sharing experimental results. The company intentionally builds on existing AI tools, such as utilizing OpenAI’s GPT-5.5 Codex for coding tasks, reflecting how human scientists leverage available software rather than creating all tools in-house.

The startup currently employs about a dozen people working from its London office in King’s Cross, a growing AI hub partly influenced by DeepMind’s presence, and plans to expand its team to 20-25 employees by year-end. Co-founder Edward Hughes has also voiced support for reforming restrictive employment practices like “garden leave” in the UK, which can hinder talent mobility. With its novel focus and growing team, Inherent looks poised to attract AI researchers, especially those considering moves from DeepMind amid shifts at the parent company.