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

Meta's star AI scientist Yann LeCun plans to leave for own startup

Meta's chief AI scientist and Turing Award winner Yann LeCun plans to leave the company to launch his own startup focused on a different type of AI called "world models," the Financial Times reported. The French-US scientist has reportedly told associates he will depart in the coming months and is already in early talks to raise funds for the new venture. The departure comes as CEO Mark Zuckerberg radically overhauled Meta's AI operations after deciding the company had fallen behind rivals such as OpenAI and Google. World models are hypothetical AI systems that some AI engineers expect to develop an internal "understanding" of the physical world by learning from video and spatial data rather than text alone. Unlike current large language models (such as the kind that power ChatGPT) that predict the next segment of data in a sequence, world models would ideally simulate cause-and-effect scenarios, understand physics, and enable machines to reason and plan more like animals do. LeCun has said this architecture could take a decade to fully develop. While some AI experts believe that Transformer-based AI models -- such as large language models, video synthesis models, and interactive world synthesis models -- have emergently modeled physics or absorbed the structural rules of the physical world from training data examples, the evidence so far generally points to sophisticated pattern-matching rather than a base understanding of how the physical world actually works. LeCun's planned exit is the latest in a string of leadership reshuffles at Meta during what has been a tumultuous year for the company. A key turning point was the disappointing launch and benchmark-gaming controversy of the AI language model Llama 4 in April, which many in the industry saw as a flop when it performed worse than the most advanced offerings from Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic. Meanwhile, the Meta AI chatbot has failed to gain traction with consumers and suffered controversies and setbacks over its interactions with children. A different approach to AI LeCun founded Meta's Fundamental AI Research lab, known as FAIR, in 2013 and has served as the company's chief AI scientist ever since. He is one of three researchers who won the 2018 Turing Award for pioneering work on deep learning and convolutional neural networks. After leaving Meta, LeCun will remain a professor at New York University, where he has taught since 2003. LeCun has previously argued that large language models like Llama that Zuckerberg has put at the center of his strategy are useful, but they will never be able to reason and plan like humans, increasingly appearing to contradict his boss's grandiose AI vision for developing "superintelligence." For example, in May 2024, when an OpenAI researcher discussed the need to control ultra-intelligent AI, LeCun responded on X by writing that before urgently figuring out how to control AI systems much smarter than humans, researchers need to have the beginning of a hint of a design for a system smarter than a house cat. Within FAIR, LeCun has instead focused on developing world models that can truly plan and reason. Over the past year, though, Meta's AI research groups have seen growing tension and mass layoffs as Zuckerberg has shifted the company's AI strategy away from long-term research and toward the rapid deployment of commercial products. Over the summer, Zuckerberg hired Alexandr Wang to lead a new superintelligence team at Meta, paying $14.3 billion to hire the 28-year-old founder of data-labeling startup Scale AI and acquire a 49 percent interest in his company. LeCun, who had previously reported to Chief Product Officer Chris Cox, now reports to Wang, which seems like a sharp rebuke of LeCun's approach to AI. Zuckerberg also personally handpicked an exclusive team called TBD Lab to accelerate the development of the next iteration of large language models, luring staff from rivals such as OpenAI and Google with astonishingly large $100 to $250 million pay packages. As a result, 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. But if it turns out like his previous pivot to the metaverse, Zuckerberg's latest bet could prove equally expensive and unfruitful.

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's 'godfather of AI' departs the company to form his own startup -- Turing award winner Yann LeCun advocates for the development of World Models over LLMs

The 12-year veteran of Meta and Turing award winner has focused on developing AI that learn from images and video, rather than text. Meta's chief AI scientist, Yann LeCun, is leaving to found his own startup in the coming months, according to a new report. This is a huge blow for Meta, which went on an aggressive, expensive hiring spree in 2025 to build out its AI development divisions with key talent, often attempting to poach them from competitors. A 12-year veteran of the company, LeCun has been instrumental in Meta's AI research throughout many of the company's eras, but now seems set to strike out on his own to develop what he sees as the next frontier in AI development, the Financial Times reports. French-American Yann LeCun has a long history of AI research, with notable work in the fields of optical character recognition and computer vision. He received the Turing Award in 2018 for his work on deep learning, and alongside Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio, is often referred to as one of the three "Godfathers of AI." He became the director of Meta's AI research division in 2013, before becoming its chief AI scientist later that decade. Despite his long tenure at the company, those around him claim he's keen to move on to develop "World Models." Unlike the large language models (LLM) of today's AI, World Models use video and spatial data, rather than text, to understand the world around them. These are particularly handy for anything interfacing with the real world, such as robotics or self-driving cars. This is distinctly different from the approach Meta is taking with its current AI division, which may be the catalyst behind LeCun looking to explore greener pastures. Like Google and Microsoft, once the shockwaves of OpenAI's ChatGPT launch were felt throughout the industry, Meta pivoted toward developing its own large language models. It had maintained an AI research division for over a decade, and Mark Zuckerberg had spent the previous few years pushing his Metaverse VR concept as hard as his multi-billion-dollar fortune and multi-trillion-dollar company would allow. But to date, Meta has struggled to make a serious impact. Meta's Llama AI models having clear weighting has drawn praise, but it has repeatedly underperformed when compared to competitors such as DeepSeek, Google, and xAI. In an effort to remain competitive, Meta went on a hiring spree this year, spending over $14 billion to acquire the CEO of data annotation firm, ScaleAI, Alexandr Wang, as well as offering signing bonuses of up to $100 million, while attempting to poach top talent from OpenAI, Google, and others. Mark Zuckerberg reportedly maintained a list of the most enticing talent and reached out to many of them personally to try to secure their employment, all while it struggled to retain the talent it already had. Zuckerberg has come under increasing pressure from Meta investors to show the potential profit behind his AI investments. Meta's stock lost over $240 billion in value after Zuckerberg revealed plans to spend over $100 billion in AI in 2026. This may be why, with this influx of new talent, Meta has pivoted away from developing an AI to compete with contemporary models and is instead focusing on developing "superintelligence" as part of a newly designated "TBD lab." Under this new structure, Meta's AI product team, data center and infrastructure teams, and fundamental AI research team led by LeCun, would all report directly to the 28-year-old Alexandr Wang. Wang, former roommate of Sam Altman and once the world's youngest billionaire, has drawn criticism (and is under investigation) for allegations that his company used low-paid workers to generate vast quantities of annotated data that could be used as AI training data. This stands in stark contrast to LeCun's pedigree and may well be a factor in his departure. For the head of Meta's AI research, Lecun has also been highly critical of the kind of AI that Meta is developing. In April, NewsWeek quoted him as saying that large language models would be obsolete in just a few years, and cited a talk he gave in 2024 where he advised young developers not to "work on (LLMs)," and instead told them "there's nothing you can bring to the table." Instead, LeCun has been advocating for the development of "World Models." These AI models leverage data from the real, physical world, including video, to understand the world around them. The Financial Times reports that LeCun believes it could take up to a decade for these kinds of AI models to reach maturity, but that when they do, they'll be a far better fit for physical devices that can be enhanced with AI. If that proves to be the case, Meta may be on the cusp of losing one of the foundational developers of not only the AI of the past, but the AI of the future, too. While Meta has all the money in the world to try to tempt him back, shareholders may not be so keen to spend it, leaving Meta increasingly boxed in despite its longstanding industry position.

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.

â€~Imagine a Cube Floating in the Air’: The New AI Dream Allegedly Driving Yann LeCun Away from Meta

One of the most important AI scientists in Big Tech wants to scrap the current approach to building human-level AI. What we need, Yann LeCun has indicated, are not large language models, but “world models.†LeCun, chief AI scientist of "fundamental AI research" at Meta, is expected to resign from Meta soon according to multiple reports from credible outlets. LeCun is a 65-year-old elder statesman in the world of AI science, and he has had seemingly limitless resources at his disposal working as the big AI brain at one of the world’s largest tech companies. Why is he leaving a company that’s been spending lavishly, poaching the most highly-skilled AI experts from other firms, and, according to a July blog post by CEO Mark Zuckerburg, making such astonishing leaps in-house that supposedly the development of “superintelligence is now in sightâ€? He’s actually been hinting at the answer for a long time. When it comes to human-level intelligence, LeCun has become notorious lately for saying LLMs as we currently understand them are dudsâ€"no longer worth pursuing, no matter how much Big Tech scales them up. He said in April of last year that “an LLM is basically an off-ramp, a distraction, a dead end.†(The arch AI critic Gary Marcus has ripped into LeCun for “belligerently†defending LLMs from Marcus’ own critiques and then flip-flopping.) A Wall Street Journal analysis of LeCun’s career published Friday points to some other possibilities about the reasons for his departure in light of this belief. This past summer, a 28-year-old named Alexandr Wangâ€"the co-creator of the LLM-based sensation ChatGPTâ€"became the head of AI at Meta, making an upstart LLM fanatic LeCun’s boss. And Meta brought in another relatively young chief scientist to work above LeCun this year, Shengjia Zhao. Meta’s announcement of Zhao’s new role touts a scaling “breakthrough†he apparently delivered. LeCun says he has lost faith in scaling. If you're wondering how LeCun can be a chief scientist if Zhao is also a chief scientist, it's because Meta's AI operation sounds like it has an eccentric org chart, split into multiple, separate groups. Hundreds of people were laid off last month, apparently in an effort to straighten all this out. The Financial Times’ report on LeCun from earlier this week suggests that LeCun will now found a startup focused on “world models.â€Â Again, LeCun has not been shy about why he thinks world models have the answers AI needs. He gave a detailed speech about this at the AI Action Summit in Paris back in February, but it got kind of overshadowed by the U.S. representative, Vice President J.D. Vance, giving a bellicose speech about how everyone had better get out of America's way on AI. As spelled out in his speechâ€"LeCun, who worked on the Meta AI smart glasses, but not to a significant degree on Meta's Llama LLMâ€"is a huge believer in wearables. We'll need to interact with future wearables as if they are people, he thinks, and LLMs simply don't understand the world like people do. With LLMs, he says, "we can’t even reproduce cat intelligence or rat intelligence, let alone dog intelligence. They can do amazing feats. They understand the physical world. Any housecat can plan very highly complex actions. And they have causal models of the world." LeCun provides a thought experiment to illustrate what he thinks might promptâ€"if you willâ€"a world model, and it's something he thinks any human can easily do that an LLM simply cannot: "If I tell you 'imagine a cube floating in the air in front of you. Okay now rotate this cube by 90 degrees around a vertical axis. What does it look like?' It’s very easy for you to kind of have this mental model of a cube rotating."  With very little effort, an LLM can write a dirty limerick about a hovering, rotating cube, sure, but it can't really help you interact with one. LeCun avers that this is because of a difference between text data and data derived from processing the many parts of the world that aren't text. While LLMs are trained on an amount of text it would take 450,000 years to read, LeCun says, a four-year-old child who has been awake for 16,000 hours has processed, with their eyes or by touching, 1.4 x 10^14bytes of sensory data about the world, which he says is more than an LLM. These, by the way, are just the estimates LeCun gives in his speech, and it should be noted that he has given others. The abstraction the numbers are pointing to, however, is that LLMs are limited in ways that LeCun thinks world models would not be. LeCun has already begun working on world models at Metaâ€"including making an introductory video that implores you to imagine a rotating cube. The model of LeCun's dreams as described in his AI Action Summit speech contains a current "estimate of the state of the world," in the form of some sort of abstract representation of, well, everything, or at least everything that's relevant in the current context, and rather than sequential, tokenized prediction, it "predicts the resulting state of the world that will occur after you take that sequence of actions." World models will allow future computer scientists to build, he says, "systems that can plan actionsâ€"possibly hierarchicallyâ€"so as to fulfill an objective, and systems that can reason." LeCun also insists that such systems will have more robust safety features, because the ways we control them will be built into them, rather than being mysterious black boxes that spit out text, and which have to be refined by fine tuning. In what LeCun says is classical AIâ€"such as the software used in a search engineâ€"all problems are reducible to optimization. His world model, he suggests, will look at the current state of the world, and seek compatibility with some different state by finding efficient solutions. "You want an energy function that measures incompatibility, and given an x, find a y that has low energy for that x," LeCun says in his speech.  Again, these are just credible reports from leaked information about LeCun's plans, and he hasn't even confirmed that he's founding something new. If everything we can cobble together from LeCun's public statements sounds tentative and a bit fuzzy at the current phase, it should. LeCun sounds like he has a moonshot in mind, and he's pushing for another ChatGPT-like explosion of uncanny abilities. It could take agesâ€"or literally foreverâ€"not to mention billions of investor dollars, for anything truly remarkable to materialize. Gizmodo reached out to Meta for comment on how LeCun's work fits into the company's AI mission, and will update if we hear back.Â

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.

Meta AI chief Yann LeCun reportedly leaving company

It seems like there's always a shakeup going down in AI, with Meta seeing more shakeups than most. The company recently laid off 600 people within its AI unit. Now, Yann LeCun, a chief AI scientist at Meta and professor at New York University, is planning to leave the company and build his own startup, anonymous sources told the Financial Times. Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Mashable. The report says that LeCun, who won the prestigious A.M. Turing Award for breakthroughs in AI, will be leaving in the coming months to pursue work on a startup that focuses on his own world models. He is already working on raising capital for the startup, according to the Financial Times. LeCun wouldn't be the first to focus on world models, which, according to TechCrunch, are AI systems that develop "an internal understanding of its environment so it can simulate cause-and-effect scenarios to predict outcomes." World Lab, Google DeepMind, and Nvidia are all also developing world models.

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.

Yann LeCun's exit highlights tensions in Meta's shifting AI strategy - SiliconANGLE

Yann LeCun's exit highlights tensions in Meta's shifting AI strategy Meta Platforms Inc.'s chief AI scientist Yann LeCun is leaving the company to launch his own startup, according to the Financial Times. A Turing Award winner who worked under "the Godfather of AI," Jeffrey Hinton, in the 1980s, LeCun (pictured) is one of the leading figures in artificial intelligence. After moving from France to the U.S., he worked at AT&T Bell Laboratories, where he pioneered research in machine learning. He joined Meta to work on its advanced AI lab, FAIR, and became the company's chief AI scientist in 2013. LeCun previously reported to Meta's Chief Product Officer, Chris Cox. However, after the company's recent restructuring, he now reports directly to Alexandr Wang, who leads Meta's new superintelligence division. Wang joined the company earlier this year following Meta's $14 billion investment in his data-labeling startup, Scale AI. According to some reports, Wang's personality didn't receive everyone's approval. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg recently bucked a trend by not hiring employees with AI experience, but laying off 600 of them. His shakeup is an effort to make Meta more competitive with OpenAI Group PBC, Anthropic PBC and Google LLC. Reports suggest that LeCun may have become frustrated at the chaotic environment. Some of the AI researchers Meta brought in lasted just months, with three reported to have left the building no sooner than they filled their desks with family photos. According to the Financial Times report, LeCunn's next venture will be centered around creating "new world" models of AI, systems that imagine how the world works and can predict what will happen in future scenarios, bringing AI closer to human-like reasoning than pattern recognition. This is touted as the next step in the AI revolution, with LeCun previously stating that large language models, LLMs, are not the way to achieve artificial superintelligence. "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 on X last year, explaining that the road to superintelligence is a long one.

Meta's chief AI scientist Yann LeCun plans exit to launch world-model startup

Meta shares dipped 1.5% pre-market as investors reacted to news of LeCun's potential departure. Meta's chief AI scientist Yann LeCun is preparing to leave the company to establish a new AI startup focused on world models, prompting investor attention as Meta relies on his leadership for core artificial intelligence research. The Financial Times, citing people familiar with the matter, reported that LeCun is in early discussions to raise capital for the venture, which would advance his longstanding research agenda on computational world models -- systems that learn structured representations of the physical and conceptual environment to support prediction and autonomous decision-making. News of his prospective departure coincided with a 1.5% decline in Meta's share price during pre-market trading, reflecting market scrutiny of changes to the company's AI leadership. LeCun's standing within the field is rooted in work from the late 1980s and early 1990s, when he developed LeNet, among the first successful convolutional neural networks for handwritten-digit recognition. That architecture demonstrated how layered convolutional filters, shared weights, and pooling operations could extract hierarchical visual features, enabling robust automated reading of bank checks and postal codes. LeNet's design directly informed modern convolutional neural networks that support large-scale image classification, facial recognition pipelines, and perception systems used in autonomous vehicles. LeCun joined Facebook in December 2013 as founding director of Facebook AI Research (FAIR), tasked with building a dedicated fundamental research organization. In his current position as Meta's chief AI scientist, he oversees long-horizon work in self-supervised learning algorithms that reduce reliance on labeled data, world-model research aimed at more general machine understanding, and architectures for autonomous AI systems that can learn, reason, and act under uncertainty across complex tasks. Meta has linked its strategic direction to large-scale AI investment, stating that it plans to invest more than $600 billion in the United States by 2028, spanning AI technology development, data center and compute infrastructure, and workforce initiatives. In 2023, the company committed $14.3 billion to acquire a 49% stake in Scale AI. As part of this transaction, Scale AI's former chief executive Alexandr Wang joined Meta and now holds a leadership role to whom LeCun reports, according to the FT account. In October 2023, Meta eliminated around 600 positions within its AI organizations. The company described the move as an effort to streamline operations and reduce decision-making layers. The cuts affected FAIR and the AI product and infrastructure division, while TBD Labs -- an elite unit within the Wang-led Meta Superintelligence Labs focused on next-generation foundation models -- remained unaffected. LeCun has consistently challenged claims that current generative AI poses catastrophic risks. He has characterized such warnings as "ridiculous" and "complete B.S." and has expressed skepticism that large language models, in their present trajectory, will produce artificial general intelligence or AI superintelligence.

Godfather of AI Might Soon Leave Meta: Know the Reason

Meta could reportedly lose a valuable artificial intelligence (AI) talent soon. As per the report, the company's Vice President and Chief AI Scientist, Yann LeCun, is planning to take an exit in the coming months. The Turing Award winner and one of the three godfathers of AI is said to be leaving to launch his own startup. The Menlo Park-headquartered tech giant's shift in focus on AI and growing differences between him and CEO Mark Zuckerberg have reportedly also contributed to the decision. Yann LeCun Could Soon Leave Meta According to the Financial Times, LeCun is all set to part ways with the parent company of Facebook. Citing unnamed people familiar with the matter, the publication claimed that he has told his coworkers about his plans to leave Meta in the coming months. The Turing Award winner has reportedly also held early discussions with investors to raise funds for a new venture, which hints that his next goal might be launching a startup. LeCun's reported departure is not the first such instance. Meta has been losing its AI talent in recent months. A report in August claimed that at least eight employees working in the AI division had announced their exit. Interestingly, most of these departures were from long-serving employees and not those who recently joined the Superintelligence team. The report claims that in recent times, Zuckerberg moved the company's focus from its Fundamental AI Research Lab (Fair), which was headed by LeCun since 2013. Instead, he reportedly favoured rapidly building artificial general intelligence (AGI) and superintelligence, and created the Superintelligence team, which was led by the former Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang. Due to this shift in focus and restructuring of hierarchy, LeCun, who reported directly to Chief Product Officer Chris Cox, is said to be reporting to Wang at present. The report also claims that Zuckerberg and LeCun disagreed with each other on their views on AI. It is difficult to ascertain whether any of these reasons played a role in the Turing Award winner's purported exit. It is said that after Meta, LeCun's next destination would be launching a startup and developing world models, or AI systems that understand and predict how the world works. Instead of merely reacting to inputs, an AI with a world model can simulate future scenarios, reason about cause and effect, and anticipate the outcomes of actions. World models are increasingly seen as a foundation for more capable AI systems, enabling them to move beyond pattern matching towards genuine reasoning and long-horizon decision-making.

Meta's Yann LeCun to Launch Physical A.I. Startup After Declaring LLMs a 'Dead End'

The pioneering A.I. researcher is betting on a new paradigm that teaches machines to understand the physical world, not just language. Yann LeCun, Meta's chief A.I. scientist, is reportedly leaving the tech giant to launch his own A.I. startup, according to the Financial Times, which cited sources familiar with the matter. His departure comes as Meta increasingly reorients its efforts toward developing advanced forms of A.I. A hiring spree and internal restructuring have prioritized Meta's research on superintelligence, placing LeCun's long-term work at Meta's Fundamental AI Research (FAIR) lab on the back burner. Sign Up For Our Daily Newsletter Sign Up Thank you for signing up! By clicking submit, you agree to our <a href="http://observermedia.com/terms">terms of service</a> and acknowledge we may use your information to send you emails, product samples, and promotions on this website and other properties. You can opt out anytime. See all of our newsletters Meta and LeCun did not respond to requests for comment from Observer. The French-American computer scientist, who moved to the U.S. in the 1980s to work at AT&T Bell Laboratories, is known for his pioneering research in machine learning. LeCun joined Meta in 2013, where he helped launch the company's FAIR team and became its chief A.I. scientist in 2018. The same year, he won the Turing Award for his contribution to the breakthroughs in neural networks. LeCun previously reported to Meta's chief product officer Chris Cox, but following the company's recent restructuring, he now reports to Alexandr Wang, head of Meta's superintelligence division. Wang was recruited earlier this year after Meta invested more than $14 billion in his data labelling startup, Scale AI. Meta's aggressive talent push coincided with a company-wide restructuring that is consolidating much of its A.I. research under TBD labs, a group focused on achieving A.I. that surpasses human capabilities. Three other divisions within Meta's A.I. organization are dedicated to products, infrastructure and FAIR. FAIR, which focuses on long-term, exploratory research, has contributed to early versions of Meta's Llama model. LeCun's departure marks another setback for the group, which in April lost its leader, Joelle Pineau. Pineau is now head of research at Canadian A.I. startup Cohere. World models pick up steam LeCun's next venture will center on "world models," according to the Financial Times. He is reportedly in early funding discussions for a startup focused on training A.I. systems to understand the physical world rather than merely generating language. His move into world models isn't surprising given his skepticism about the sustainability of large language models (LLMs). LeCun has previously called LLMs a "dead end" to reaching human-like A.I., instead advocating for systems that can perceive their environments and grasp physical concepts such as gravity. He isn't alone in this pursuit. Stanford's Fei-Fei Li has raised about $230 million for her startup World Labs, which similarly seeks to give A.I. "spatial intelligence." Google DeepMind has explored world models through its Genie releases, and Nvidia is pushing into physical A.I. with products like its Cosmos world models. LeCun believes world models, not LLMs, are the key to developing A.I. that can reason, plan complex actions, and make predictions. "We're never going to get to human-level A.I. by just training on text," said the researcher during a Harvard talk in September. "Despite what you might hear from some of the more optimistic-sounding CEOs of various A.I. companies in Silicon Valley, it's just not going to happen."

Zuckerberg finally snaps! LeCun's Meta exit reportedly sparked by $15 billion Alexandr Wang deal

Yann LeCun, Meta's longtime chief scientist, reportedly decided to leave Meta Platforms Inc., and insiders say it was almost inevitable. Yuchen Jin, co-founder and CTO of Hyperbolic, suggested on X that LeCun's exit happened because CEO Mark Zuckerberg bet $15 billion on Alexandr Wang and made LeCun report directly to him. Jin wrote that Zuckerberg "panicked" after OpenAI's ChatGPT became a big success, while Meta's Llama 4 large language model did not perform as expected, as per the report by Benzinga. According to Jin, Zuckerberg grew impatient with LeCun's long-term approach to AI research, which led to tensions and the reported fallout. LeCun reportedly never believed that large language models (LLMs) could lead to artificial general intelligence (AGI). Jin said, "Yann never believed in LLM-to-AGI. Zuck's patience ran out." Jin compared the situation to Google rehiring AI pioneer Noam Shazeer, saying, "Zuck might buy Yann back at a crazy price." Shazeer had left Google in 2021 to start Character.AI, and Google spent $2.7 billion in 2024 to bring him back. Previously, LeCun reported to Chief Product Officer Chris Cox, but after the shake-up, he had to report to Alexandr Wang, the 27-year-old Scale AI founder. Wang now leads Meta's new "superintelligence" division, reflecting Zuckerberg's shift from fundamental AI research toward faster, product-focused AI innovation. LeCun has always said LLMs are "useful" but cannot reason or plan like humans, which reportedly clashed with Meta's new AI direction, as per the report by Benzinga. Wang defended Meta's AI progress on X, saying visits to Meta AI surged 105% month-over-month in October 2025, surpassing rivals like Perplexity and Claude, citing Similarweb data. Investors are concerned about Meta losing the AI race. Steve Eisman warned that Google and Microsoft could outperform Meta, especially as Zuckerberg plans to invest over $600 billion in U.S.-based AI infrastructure by 2028. Meta stock closed at $627.08 on Tuesday, down 0.74%, and after-hours trading showed a slight decline of 0.01% to $627. Benzinga's Edge Stock Rankings indicate META has been trending downward in short, medium, and long-term periods. Q1. Why did Yann LeCun leave Meta? Yann LeCun reportedly left Meta because Mark Zuckerberg shifted AI leadership to Alexandr Wang and disagreed with LeCun's long-term AI approach. Q2. What is Alexandr Wang's role at Meta? Alexandr Wang now leads Meta's "superintelligence" division, focusing on fast, product-focused AI innovation.

Mark Zuckerberg's Patience 'Ran Out': Hyperbolic CTO Says Yann LeCun's Meta Exit Was Inevitable After $15 Billion Alexandr Wang Deal - Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG), Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META)

On Tuesday, Hyperbolic co-founder and CTO Yuchen Jin alleged that Yann LeCun's reported decision to leave Meta Platforms Inc. (NASDAQ:META) was inevitable, suggesting that CEO Mark Zuckerberg's bet on Alexandr Wang and a shift in AI leadership left little room for the company's longtime chief scientist. Hyperbolic CTO Says Zuckerberg Panicked After ChatGPT Success In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Jin wrote that LeCun's exit was "an outcome" that was inevitable after Zuckerberg spent $15 billion to acquire Wang and made "Yann report to him." He added that Zuckerberg panicked following the success of OpenAI's ChatGPT, noting that Meta's own large language model, Llama 4, had failed to deliver comparable results. According to Jin, Zuckerberg's growing impatience with LeCun's long-term approach to AI research ultimately led to the reported fallout. See Also: Tesla's $1 Trillion Illusion: Elon Musk's Pay Package And The Robotaxi Myth Hyperbolic CTO Cites Google's Noam Shazeer Parallel "Yann never believed in LLM-to-AGI. Zuck's patience ran out," Jin said, referencing LeCun's skepticism toward large language models as the foundation for achieving artificial general intelligence. Jin suggested that "Zuck might buy Yann back at a crazy price" drawing a comparison to Alphabet Inc.'s (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOG) subsidiary Google's decision to rehire renowned AI pioneer Noam Shazeer. Shazeer, the creator behind Google's Language Model for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA), departed the company in October 2021 to found the chatbot startup Character.AI. Google reportedly spent about $2.7 billion in 2024 to license Character.AI's technology and bring Shazeer back to spearhead its AI initiatives. Meta's AI Power Shift Under Alexandr Wang LeCun, who previously reported to Chief Product Officer Chris Cox, now report to Wang, the 27-year-old Scale AI founder brought in to lead Meta's new "superintelligence" division. The structural shake-up reflects Zuckerberg's pivot from fundamental AI research toward rapid, product-focused innovation aimed at catching up with OpenAI and Google. LeCun has long maintained that while LLMs are "useful," they cannot reason or plan like humans -- a stance that reportedly put him at odds with Meta's new AI direction. Meta's AI Race Intensifies Amid Investor Concerns Wang, defending Meta's progress, highlighted on X that Meta AI's visits surged 105% month-over-month in October 2025, outperforming rivals like Perplexity and Claude, citing Similarweb data. Meanwhile, investor Steve Eisman has warned that Meta risks losing the AI spending war to Google and Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT), as Zuckerberg plans to invest over $600 billion in U.S.-based AI infrastructure by 2028. Meta closed at $627.08 on Tuesday, down 0.74%, with after-hours trading showing a slight decline of 0.01% to $627. Benzinga's Edge Stock Rankings show that META has continued to trend downward over short, medium and long-term periods. More detailed performance data can be found here. Read More: Tesla Investor Ross Gerber Says 'Super Sad' To See Federal EV Subsidies End: 'Credits Created...' Photo Courtesy: Frederic Legrand - COMEO on Shutterstock.com Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors. GOOGAlphabet Inc$292.000.49%OverviewMETAMeta Platforms Inc$627.00-0.75%MSFTMicrosoft Corp$508.860.57%Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs

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)

LeCun's Exit Deals a Blow to Meta's AI Ambitions Amid Cost Pressures | PYMNTS.com

By completing this form, you agree to receive marketing communications from PYMNTS and to the sharing of your information with our sponsor, if applicable, in accordance with our Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions. LeCun's decision comes as Meta faces turbulence in its AI operations. The company announced Oct. 22 that it would cut about 600 roles in its AI unit to make the unit more agile. The cuts targeted Meta's FAIR AI research, product-related AI and AI infrastructure units. The restructuring, led by Meta Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang, is part of a move to create a unified TBD Lab to streamline product and research functions. Meta's AI spending has also drawn investor scrutiny. The company's total costs and expenses rose 32% year over year to $30.7 billion, according to a third-quarter 2025 earnings report released Oct. 29. Capital expenditures reached $19.4 billion, a record quarterly high. Meta also said it expects full-year expenses of $116 billion to $118 billion and capex of $70 billion to $72 billion. Meanwhile, Meta's AI ambitions come with execution risks. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has called the company's mission "building personal superintelligence for everyone," while the company continues to spend on compute, data centers and AI talent with unclear near-term monetization. LeCun's departure amid this backdrop reflects a broader realignment. Big Tech's most influential researchers are increasingly leaving corporate labs to found independent companies that pursue their own technical agendas. LeCun joins a growing cohort of AI scientists stepping into entrepreneurial roles. Former OpenAI Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati raised $2 billion for her company, Thinking Machines Lab, which is valued at about $10 billion. Her move follows that of Stanford professor Fei-Fei Li, who co-founded World Labs to advance spatial intelligence AI and reached unicorn status within months of its debut. Andrej Karpathy, Li's former student and Tesla's ex-Autopilot chief, is now developing an AI native school at Eureka Labs. These researcher-founders share a conviction that AI's next breakthroughs won't come from scaling transformers but from systems capable of perceiving causality, spatial relationships and physical context. Their companies, many built on open-research principles, are attracting record funding rounds as investors shift capital toward scientist-led innovation. One of the clearest examples of this model is Aravind Srinivas, co-founder and CEO of Perplexity AI. A former researcher at OpenAI, Google Brain and DeepMind, Srinivas launched Perplexity in 2022 to develop a real-time, citation-based search platform. By May, the company was processing 780 million queries a month, highlighting how research expertise can translate directly into scalable commercial success. In June, Databricks and Perplexity co-founder Andy Konwinski pledged $100 million of his own capital to launch the Laude Institute, a research fund supporting independent AI systems work. Its first initiative, the AI Systems Lab at UC Berkeley, led by Professor Ion Stoica, will receive about $3 million annually over five years. Konwinski's fund illustrates how the researcher-founder movement extends beyond startups into research financing itself, supporting a decentralized ecosystem where scientists build, fund and commercialize their own ideas. LeCun's departure will likely deal a symbolic and strategic blow to Meta at a critical point in its AI overhaul. The company is already under pressure to show that its massive infrastructure investments can translate into clear product outcomes. Losing the scientist who helped build its FAIR research arm and shaped much of its early AI credibility could deepen investor skepticism about whether Meta can sustain its pace of innovation.

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)

Meta chief AI scientist Yann LeCun thinks LLMs are a waste of time

LeCun argues world-model research, not LLM expansion, defines AI's future For most of Silicon Valley, the future of artificial intelligence is simple: scale. If one large language model can summarise documents, write code, and spin out essays in seconds, then a bigger model - with more data, more compute, and more parameters - must be better. But inside Meta, one of Big Tech's most aggressive AI players, its chief AI scientist Yann LeCun has been quietly, and increasingly loudly, declaring the opposite. According to him, today's LLM-driven AI boom is not just misguided, it is a scientific dead end. LeCun isn't a contrarian by instinct. For more than four decades, he's been one of the field's most respected voices. His work in deep learning helped shape the neural network revolution that powers nearly every AI system today. He won the Turing Award, the "Nobel Prize of computing," alongside Geoff Hinton and Yoshua Bengio. So when he expresses frustration with the current hype cycle, the industry pays attention. Also read: RIP em dashes: ChatGPT just made AI writing harder to spot In his view, the central flaw in LLM-first thinking is simple: "They don't understand the world." Large language models predict the next word with astonishing efficiency, but LeCun argues that prediction is not cognition. True intelligence, he says, depends on the ability to build a model of reality, to understand objects, physics, cause-and-effect, and how actions change the world. "A cat understands the world better than any LLM," he has said multiple times. And to him, that gap matters more than any benchmark or demo that dazzles investors. The WSJ report that reignited conversation around his stance also pointed to something deeper: a widening philosophical rift inside Meta. While CEO Mark Zuckerberg has thrown the company into an all-out race for AI scale, training larger and larger Llama models to power everything from Instagram search to WhatsApp chatbots, LeCun's research group, FAIR, has taken a more fundamental, almost academic approach. FAIR is working on what LeCun calls "world models," systems that can learn from perception, interaction, and feedback rather than text scraped from the internet. It's a direction that requires patience. It may also require a level of research freedom that Meta, now increasingly product-driven and competitive with OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google, may be less willing to prioritise. Also read: From Minecraft to multi-world intelligence: Google's ambition behind SIMA 2 Unsurprisingly, reports have suggested that LeCun has been exploring the possibility of launching a startup dedicated to this very idea. If true, it would mark a turning point, one of the founding fathers of modern deep learning stepping away to reinvent the next era of AI. What makes LeCun's critique stand out is that it isn't rooted in fear, unlike many voices warning of runaway superintelligence or AI doom. He is, in fact, one of the field's most outspoken critics of "AI safety" alarmism. Instead, he believes the current trajectory is intellectually shallow. Scaling LLMs, he argues, is like trying to build a rocket by simply strapping on more fuel tanks. You'll get higher for a while, but eventually the physics breaks. In the short term, his view hasn't slowed down the LLM race. Companies are pouring billions into GPUs and data centres, chasing commercially valuable chatbots, agents, and AI assistants. But even some inside the industry admit that meaningful improvements are flattening out. Many of the problems LeCun points to - hallucination, brittleness, lack of planning - remain stubbornly unresolved despite bigger and bigger models. The irony is that LeCun isn't anti-LLM. He insists they're useful tools, just not a path to AI that can reason, plan, or understand the world. And understanding the world is ultimately what intelligence is.