Meta's Chief AI Scientist Yann LeCun Plans Departure to Launch World Models Startup

Meta's chief AI scientist Yann LeCun reportedly plans to leave to build his own startup

Meta may be about to lose one of its most renowned AI heads: Yann LeCun, a chief AI scientist at the company, is planning to leave the company to build his own startup, the Financial Times reported, citing anonymous sources. LeCun, a professor at New York University, senior researcher at Meta, and winner of the prestigious A.M. Turing Award, plans to leave in the coming months, and is already in talks to raise capital for a startup that would focus on continuing his work on world models, the report added. A world model is an AI system that develops an internal understanding of its environment so it can simulate cause-and-effect scenarios to predict outcomes. Top labs and startups like Google DeepMind and World Labs are also developing world models. LeCun's departure would come at a pivotal time for Meta, which has of late changed how it approaches AI development in response to concerns that it is being outpaced by rivals like OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic. The company has reportedly started revamping its AI organization after hiring over 50 engineers and researchers from its competitors to build out a new AI unit, dubbed Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL). Notably, Meta in June invested $14.3 billion in data-labeling vendor Scale AI and brought on board its CEO Alexandr Wang to run the new division. Those decisions, sources told TechCrunch in August, have made things increasingly chaotic at Meta's AI unit, with new talent expressing frustration with navigating the bureaucracy of a big company, while Meta's previous generative AI team has seen its scope limited. LeCun's long-term research work at the company under its Fundamental AI Research Lab (FAIR) division has been overshadowed by CEO Mark Zuckerberg's decisions to overhaul things after the company's previous family of AI models, Llama 4, failed to keep up with rival models. Unlike MSL, FAIR is designed to focus on long-term AI research -- techniques that may be used five to 10 years from now. LeCun has been openly skeptical about how AI technology -- specifically LLMs -- is currently being marketed as the cure for all of humankind's ails. He even tweeted that AI systems have a long way to go. "It seems to me that before 'urgently figuring out how to control AI systems much smarter than us' we need to have the beginning of a hint of a design for a system smarter than a house cat," he wrote. Meta did not immediately return a request for comment outside regular business hours.

Meta chief AI scientist Yann LeCun plans to exit and launch own start-up

Meta's chief artificial intelligence scientist Yann LeCun is planning to leave the social media giant to found his own start-up, as Mark Zuckerberg seeks to radically overhaul the company's AI operations. LeCun, a Turing Award winner who is considered one of the pioneers of modern AI, has told associates he will leave the Silicon Valley group in the coming months, according to people familiar with the conversations. The French-US scientist is also in early talks to raise funds for a new venture, one of the people said. LeCun declined to comment. Meta did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The impending departure comes as Meta's founder shakes up its AI strategy in order to challenge rivals such as OpenAI and Google in developing more powerful forms of AI. Zuckerberg has pivoted away from the longer-term research work of Meta's Fundamental AI Research Lab (Fair), which LeCun has headed since 2013, to focus on more rapidly rolling out models and AI products after deciding that Meta had fallen behind the competition. Over the summer, Zuckerberg hired Alexandr Wang to lead a new "superintelligence" team at Meta, paying $14.3bn to hire the 28-year-old founder of data-labelling start-up Scale AI and acquire a 49 per cent interest in his company. Within those wider AI efforts, Zuckerberg also personally handpicked an exclusive team, called TBD Lab, to propel development of the next iteration of its large language models, luring staff from rivals such as OpenAI and Google with $100mn pay packages. As a result, LeCun, who had previously reported to chief product officer Chris Cox, is now reporting to Wang. Zuckerberg's pivot followed the botched release of Meta's most recent Llama 4 model, which performed worse than the most advanced offerings from Google, OpenAI and Anthropic, while its Meta AI chatbot has failed to gain traction with consumers. LeCun, however, has long argued that the LLMs that Zuckerberg has put at the centre of his strategy are "useful" but will never be able to reason and plan like humans, increasingly appearing at odds with his boss's AI vision. Within Fair, LeCun has instead focused on developing an entirely new generation of AI systems that he hopes will power machines with human-level intelligence, known as "world models". These systems aim to understand the physical world by learning from videos and spatial data rather than just language, though LeCun has said it could take a decade to fully develop the architecture. LeCun's next endeavour is focused on furthering his work on world models, according to two people familiar with the matter. Zuckerberg has come under growing pressure from Wall Street to show that his multibillion-dollar investment in becoming an "AI leader" will pay off and boost revenue. Meta's shares plunged 12.6 per cent -- wiping out almost $240bn from its valuation -- in late October after the chief executive signalled higher AI spending ahead, which could top $100bn next year. LeCun's departure marks the latest in a string of exits and leadership and organisational reshuffles at Meta in what has been a tumultuous year for the $1.6tn company. In May, vice-president of AI research Joelle Pineau left and recently joined Canadian AI start-up Cohere. Last month, the company also laid off about 600 people from its AI research unit in a bid to cut costs, eliminate bureaucracy and release products more quickly. Zuckerberg has also brought in new AI leaders on high salaries of hundreds of millions of dollars, irking some of the old guard. In July, Shengjia Zhao, co-creator of OpenAI's ChatGPT, was hired as the chief scientist of Meta's Superintelligence Lab.

Meta chief AI scientist Yann LeCun plans to leave company to form AI startup

Serving tech enthusiasts for over 25 years. TechSpot means tech analysis and advice you can trust. In a nutshell: Yann LeCun, one of the so-called Godfathers of AI and Meta's chief artificial intelligence scientist, is reportedly planning to leave the company to form his own AI startup. LeCun is an integral part of Meta's AI ambitions, as illustrated by its shares falling 1.5% in premarket trading on the back of the news. Citing people familiar with the matter, The Financial Times reports that LeCun is in early talks to raise funds for his venture, which will focus on advancing work on world models. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, LeCun developed LeNet, one of the first successful convolutional neural networks (CNNs), used for recognizing handwritten digits. This architecture laid the foundation for modern computer vision, powering technologies like image recognition, facial recognition, and autonomous vehicles, and was a prototype for today's CNNs. LeCun joined Facebook, as it still was then, in December 2013 as the founding director of Facebook AI Research (FAIR). In his current role as Chief AI scientist, he oversees long-term research projects in areas such as self-supervised learning, world models, and autonomous AI systems. Losing the deep-learning pioneer would be a blow for Meta. The company says it plans to invest more than $600 billion in the US by 2028 in AI technology, infrastructure, and workforce development. This year also saw Meta make a $14.3 billion investment to take a 49% stake in Scale AI, hiring former CEO Alexandr Wang in the process. LeCun now reports to Wang, according to the FT report. In October, Meta laid off about 600 employees within its artificial intelligence groups, a move the company says will streamline operations and remove layers in the decision-making process. Workers in FAIR and its AI product and infrastructure division were most affected. TBD Labs, an elite unit within Wang-led Meta Superintelligence Labs that develops next-generation foundation models, was unaffected by the layoffs. LeCun has a more grounded, many would say realistic view of generative AI's future. He has said on more than one occasion that its threats to humanity are "ridiculous" and "complete B.S." He's also skeptical about AI superintelligence arriving anytime soon, or that the large language model path will lead to AGI.

Meta's Top AI Scientist Is Reportedly Quitting to Build His Own Startup

Meta's AI team might have just taken another major hit. The tech giant's chief artificial intelligence scientist, Yann LeCun, will be leaving Meta in the coming months to launch his own start-up, according to the Financial Times. LeCun is a big deal in AI. As a Turing Award winner, the scientist is considered one of the leading figures in modern AI. The Financial Times reported on Tuesday that LeCun is in early funding talks for a new venture. The news, if true, is only the latest in a series of blows the tech giant has received in the past few months as it struggles to pan out its ambitious AI goals. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg envisioned a big AI turnaround story after admitting that the company had fallen behind peers in the AI race. That intended turnaround started earlier this year with the formation of Meta Superintelligence Labs, for which the tech giant spent billions of dollars to poach top talent from OpenAI, Apple, and more. The move also included pseudo-acquiring Scale AI by gutting talent at the startup and bringing over founder Alexandr Wang to lead Meta's superintelligence team. According to previous reports, the 28-year-old tech executive's leadership style has clashed with some employees. LeCun used to report to Meta's chief product officer Chris Cox until the acqui-hire, but is now reporting to Wang, the FT reported on Tuesday. Despite the flashy spending goals, things took a turn in August. In a surprise decision, Meta split its superintelligence division into four smaller groups only two months after Zuckerberg announced its formation. A few weeks after that, reports came out that Meta was already bleeding top AI talent in its superintelligence team. According to the report, at least three AI researchers had resigned after less than a month of employment at Meta. Then last month, the company went through yet another reorganization by cutting roughly 600 positions from its AI team. While that was happening, Meta’s AI efforts keep stalling. At best, the company's AI products either had their release dates delayed or fared worse than expected with users. At worst, the products have been riddled with controversy. Meta made headlines in June after it was revealed that user prompts on the Meta AI app were publicly visible to others. Later in the summer, the company came under fire and found itself in the middle of a Senate probe after a Reuters report found that Meta allowed its AI chatbots to engage in "sensual" conversations with minors. Texas attorney-general Ken Paxton's office has also opened an investigation of its own into Meta's chatbots, this time over claims that it has impersonated licensed mental health professionals. Meta's AI chatbot "Big sis Billie" also caused public outrage in August when it invited a cognitively impaired New Jersey retiree to come meet "her" at a nonexistent New York apartment, and the man died on his way into the city. For what it's worth, Meta is dedicated to continuing to spend eye-watering figures in hopes of delivering on its ambitious AI promises (creating some form of superintelligence). But dedication and spending don't always guarantee success. Meta's last scheme, the D.O.A. Metaverse, is just one prime example of that.

The rise of Yann LeCun, the 65-year-old NYU professor who is planning to leave Mark Zuckerberg's highly paid team at Meta to launch his own AI startup | Fortune

LeCun, 65, joined Facebook in December 2013 as the founding director of Fundamental AI Research, known as FAIR. He remains a Silver Professor at New York University, where he has taught since 2003. His academic credentials are formidable: LeCun is best known for developing convolutional neural networks in the late 1980s, specifically the LeNet architecture that successfully recognized handwritten digits and revolutionized computer vision. In 2019, he received the ACM Turing Award alongside Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio for breakthroughs that made deep neural networks a critical component of modern computing. Born in Soisy-sous-Montmorency, France, on July 8, 1960, LeCun grew up with an engineer father who encouraged his fascination with electronics. That early curiosity led him to ESIEE Paris, where he earned an electrical engineering diploma in 1983. He then pursued a PhD in computer science at Université Pierre et Marie Curie, completing his dissertation in 1987 on connectionist learning models -- work that proposed an early form of the backpropagation algorithm for training neural networks. At a time when neural networks were dismissed as impractical, LeCun spent a postdoctoral year with Geoffrey Hinton at the University of Toronto before joining AT&T Bell Labs in 1988. There, he developed convolutional neural networks, a breakthrough that allowed computers to process visual information in ways that mimicked human vision. His system for reading handwritten digits became so effective that NCR deployed it in bank check-reading machines starting in the mid-1990s -- at one point processing 10% to 20% of all checks in the U.S. LeCun also led development of DjVu, an image-compression technology that enabled the Internet Archive and other digital libraries to distribute scanned documents online. After a brief stint at NEC Research Institute, he joined New York University. His reported departure from Meta comes as the Facebook parent undergoes sweeping changes to its AI strategy. In June, the company invested $14.3 billion in data-labeling firm Scale AI and brought on its 28-year-old CEO, Alexandr Wang, to lead a new division called Meta Superintelligence Labs. The reorganization shifted LeCun's reporting structure: He previously reported to Chris Cox, Meta's chief product officer, but reported to Wang afterward. The structural change reflects a deeper strategic divide. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has pivoted toward rapid deployment of large language models and AI products, particularly after Meta's Llama 4 model fell short of expectations and lagged behind competitors such as OpenAI and Google. LeCun, however, has been publicly skeptical of large language models, arguing they will never achieve human-level reasoning and planning capabilities. According to the FT, LeCun is in early discussions to raise funding for a startup focused on what he calls "world models" -- AI systems that develop an internal understanding of their environment by learning from video and spatial data rather than relying solely on text. He's previously said such systems, which aim to simulate cause-and-effect scenarios and predict outcomes, may take about a decade to mature. The shift at Meta has not been without friction. Multiple former employees told Fortune's Sharon Goldman earlier this year that FAIR has been "dying a slow death" as the company prioritized commercially focused AI teams over long-term research. More than half the authors of the original Llama research paper left Meta within months of its publication. In October, Meta cut approximately 600 positions from its AI division. So while LeCun's planned move is a significant personnel change, it also signals a fundamental disagreement about the path to AGI and the role of research in an industry increasingly driven by competitive product timelines.

Meta share price down in pre-market by over 1%, Facebook, Instagram owner chief AI scientist plans to leave company, claim reports

Owner of Facebook and Instagram has significantly increased its investments in artificial intelligence, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg reorganizing the company's AI initiatives under Superintelligence Labs. Meta share price is down in the pre-market on Tuesday even though shares were up on Monday trading. META stocks at Nasdaq were down by 1.25 per cent today. This comes as Meta's chief artificial intelligence scientist Yann LeCun is planning to leave the social media company to set up his own startup, the Financial Times reported, citing people familiar with the matter, as per Reuters. Deep-learning pioneer LeCun is also in early talks to raise funds for a new venture, according to the report. The owner of Facebook and Instagram has significantly increased its investments in artificial intelligence, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg reorganizing the company's AI initiatives under Superintelligence Labs. Zuckerberg hired Alexandr Wang, former CEO of data-labeling startup Scale AI to lead the new AI effort. As a result, LeCun, who had reported to chief product officer Chris Cox, is now reporting to Wang, the report said. LeCun and Meta did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment. The company began investing in AI in 2013 by launching Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research (FAIR) unit and recruiting LeCun, who is a known skeptic of the large language model path to superintelligence. LeCun is also a Silver Professor of data science, computer science, neural science and electrical and computer engineering at New York University, according to his LinkedIn page. He is known for his work in deep learning and the invention of the convolutional neural network, which is widely used for image, video and speech recognition. LeCun, along with Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio, won the 2018 ACM A.M. Turing Award for their groundbreaking conceptual and engineering advancements in deep neural networks, which have become a cornerstone of modern computing and paved the way for the current AI boom. Big Tech companies have been spending billions of dollars in building AI infrastructure for running machines that require massive computing power. Meta has pledged to invest $600 billion in the U.S. over the next three years. Q1. Which platforms are owned by Meta platforms? A1. Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram are owned by Meta platforms. Q2. How are Meta Platform shares performing? A2. Meta Platforms shares were down by 1.25 per cent in pre-market on Tuesday. (You can now subscribe to our Economic Times WhatsApp channel)

Meta's AI Chief Scientist To Reportedly Depart, Launch Own Startup Amid Zuckerberg's AI Push - Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG), Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL)

Yann LeCun, the chief artificial intelligence scientist at Meta Platforms Inc. (NASDAQ:META), is reportedly planning to leave the company to establish his own startup. LeCun's Exit Amid AI Strategy Shift LeCun, a Turing Award recipient and a prominent figure in modern AI, is set to depart from the Silicon Valley giant in the coming months, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday. He is also in the early stages of raising funds for his new venture. LeCun's exit coincides with Zuckerberg's efforts to revamp Meta's AI strategy, aiming to compete with industry leaders like OpenAI and Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL) (NASDAQ:GOOG). The CEO has shifted focus from the long-term research work of Meta's Fundamental AI Research Lab (Fair) to a more rapid deployment of AI models and products. Meta Reshapes AI Strategy After Llama 4 Following the underwhelming release of Meta's Llama 4 model, Zuckerberg has redirected the company's AI strategy. He has hired Alexandr Wang to lead a new "superintelligence" team and formed an exclusive team, TBD Lab, to drive the development of the next iteration of its large language models. LeCun, who formerly reported to Chief Product Officer Chris Cox, will now report directly to Wang -- a move that signals a shift in Meta's AI strategy. The change comes as LeCun, a longtime critic of relying solely on large language models (LLMs), has maintained that while they are "useful," they cannot yet reason and plan like humans. See Also: Scott Galloway Warns Of Potential OpenAI Collapse Triggering An 'Ugly' Market Shock: 'Going To Be Nowhere To Hide' Structural Shake Ups At Meta LeCun's exit marks the latest in a string of leadership and structural shake-ups at Meta, which has endured a turbulent year. In May, AI research vice president Joelle Pineau departed, and just last month, the company cut roughly 600 positions from its AI research division. The news also comes as Meta's intensified efforts to strengthen the U.S.'s AI leadership. The company plans to invest over $600 billion in the U.S. by 2028 to expand its AI technology, data centers, and workforce capabilities. However, investor Steve Eisman warned that Meta is losing the AI spending war to Google and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT). The company's stock plunged after Zuckerberg signaled higher AI spending ahead, raising concerns about the return on Meta's multibillion-dollar investment in becoming an "AI leader." Meta holds a momentum rating of 48.43 and a growth rating of 72.52%, according to Benzinga's Proprietary Edge Rankings. Check the detailed report here. Price Action: On Monday, Meta fell 1.62% to close at $631.76, as per data from Benzinga Pro. Over the past 12 months, it gained 8.33%. Image via Shutterstock Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors. GOOGAlphabet Inc $289.14-0.50% Overview GOOGLAlphabet Inc $288.46-0.57% METAMeta Platforms Inc $623.50-1.31% MSFTMicrosoft Corp $504.35-0.33% Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs

Meta's top AI scientist Yann LeCun to depart as Mark Zuckerberg...

Meta's head AI scientist is reportedly planning to leave the company and launch his own startup -- the biggest exit yet in Mark Zuckerberg's push to develop "superintelligence" at the social media giant. Yann LeCun, 65, a Turing Award winner considered a pioneer in AI development, has told colleagues he will leave Meta in the coming months, people familiar with the conversations told the Financial Times. The French-American scientist is in early talks to raise funds for his own venture, the people said. Shares in Meta fell 1.2% Tuesday morning as investors grow antsy for CEO Zuckerberg to prove massive spending on the new tech will pay off. Zuckerberg has been trying to inject fresh energy into the AI division as Meta struggles to compete with behemoth rivals like OpenAI and Google. Zuckerberg has been pushing staffers to focus on more rapid product rollouts. That's a pivot away from Meta's Fundamental AI Research Lab (FAIR), which focuses on longer-term research -- and which LeCun has run since 2013. Meta -- which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp -- shelled out more than $14 billion over the summer to acquire a 49% stake in Scale AI and hire its founder, Alexandr Wang, to lead the new "superintelligence" division. LeCun, who previously reported to chief product officer Chris Cox, has since reported to 28-year-old Wang, according to the report. Zuckerberg has also been luring over staffers from rival firms with $100 million-plus pay packages, which has frustrated longtime Meta employees. In July, Meta hired Shengjia Zhao, co-creator of OpenAI's ChatGPT, as chief scientist of its new "superintelligence" division. These new teams of staffers have been focused on the development of large language models to compete with market giants like ChatGPT after Meta's Llama 4 model bombed. Its Meta AI chatbot has also failed to gain popularity. LeCun and Zuckerberg seem to hold differing views on the future of AI. The award-winning scientist has said the company's large language models will be "useful," but never able to completely replicate human reasoning. Zuckerberg, meanwhile, has touted the potential of AI, arguing that it will be able to complete most of Meta's coding within a year or so. At FAIR, LeCun has been working on a new generation of AI systems that will be able to learn about the physical world through videos and spatial data instead of just language. But he has cautioned that it could take a full decade to fully develop these models. His next project is reportedly focused on further developing these world models, two people familiar with the matter told the Financial Times. Representatives for LeCun and Meta did not immediately respond to The Post's requests for comment. Zuckerberg previously said Meta's "superintelligence" lab will cost hundreds of billions of dollars. But the Meta founder -- like other tech firms -- is facing growing pressure to prove big spending will pay off. Investors led a massive tech stock sell-off last week as they panicked that AI potential has been vastly overvalued. Shares in Meta tanked over 12% in late October -- erasing nearly $240 billion from its valuation -- after Zuckerberg said AI spending could exceed $100 billion next year. The company has also lost valuable team members, like Joelle Pineau, vice president of research, who left Meta in May to join Cohere, a Canadian AI startup. Last month, Meta slashed 600 roles in its AI research unit to cut costs and eliminate bureaucracy.

Meta stock falls on news AI chief scientist plans exit By Investing.com

Investing.com -- Meta Platforms stock dropped 1.5% in U.S. premarket trade following reports that the company's chief AI scientist, Yann LeCun, is planning to leave the tech giant. According to the Financial Times, LeCun, who has been instrumental in Meta's artificial intelligence initiatives, is in early discussions to raise funding for a new venture. The departure of the prominent AI expert comes at a critical time when Meta has been heavily investing in artificial intelligence capabilities across its platforms. LeCun has been with Meta since 2013 and is widely recognized as one of the pioneers in deep learning technology. His exit could potentially impact Meta's ongoing AI development efforts as the company continues to compete with other tech giants in the rapidly evolving artificial intelligence space. The news follows Meta's recent push to integrate AI features across its family of apps, including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. The company has not yet made an official statement regarding LeCun's reported plans to depart. This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C.

Meta chief AI scientist Yann LeCun plans to exit to launch startup, FT reports

(Reuters) -Meta's chief artificial intelligence scientist Yann LeCun is planning to leave the social media company to set up his own startup, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter. Deep-learning pioneer LeCun is also in early talks to raise funds for a new venture, according to the report. The owner of Facebook and Instagram has significantly increased its investments in artificial intelligence, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg reorganizing the company's AI initiatives under Superintelligence Labs. Zuckerberg hired Alexandr Wang, former CEO of data-labeling startup Scale AI to lead the new AI effort. As a result, LeCun, who had reported to chief product officer Chris Cox, is now reporting to Wang, the report said. LeCun and Meta did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment. The company began investing in AI in 2013 by launching Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research (FAIR) unit and recruiting LeCun, who is a known skeptic of the large language model path to superintelligence. LeCun is also a Silver Professor of data science, computer science, neural science and electrical and computer engineering at New York University, according to his LinkedIn page. He is known for his work in deep learning and the invention of the convolutional neural network, which is widely used for image, video and speech recognition. LeCun, along with Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio, won the 2018 ACM A.M. Turing Award for their groundbreaking conceptual and engineering advancements in deep neural networks, which have become a cornerstone of modern computing and paved the way for the current AI boom. Big Tech companies have been spending billions of dollars in building AI infrastructure for running machines that require massive computing power. Meta has pledged to invest $600 billion in the U.S. over the next three years. (Reporting by Jaspreet Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur)