Yann LeCun's AMI Labs raises $1.03 billion to build world models that understand reality

Yann LeCun's AMI Labs raises $1.03 billion to build world models | TechCrunch

AMI Labs, the new venture cofounded by Turing Prize winner Yann LeCun after he left Meta, has raised $1.03 billion at a $3.5 billion pre-money valuation. AMI is working on world models, or AI that learns from reality, not just from language. This category has fewer players than generative AI, but maybe not for long. "My prediction is that 'world models' will be the next buzzword," AMI Labs CEO Alexandre LeBrun told TechCrunch. "In six months, every company will call itself a world model to raise funding." LeBrun said this with a smile because he thinks AMI Labs is fundamentally different: its goal is to understand the real world. This could have applications in healthcare, where AMI Labs' first partner will be Nabla, the digital health startup of which he's now chairman. As CEO of Nabla, LeBrun had reached the same conclusion as LeCun on the limitations of large language models (LLMs) where hallucinations could have life-threatening repercussions. But he also knows it will take a while for the startup to offer a viable alternative based on JEPA, the Joint Embedding Predictive Architecture proposed by LeCun in 2022. "AMI Labs is a very ambitious project, because it starts with fundamental research. It's not your typical applied AI startup that can release a product in three months, have revenue in six months and make $10 million in [annual recurring revenue] in 12 months," LeBrun said. In contrast, it could take years for world models to go from theory to commercial applications. Despite this time horizon, companies developing world models have attracted big checks. SpAItial raised a $13 million seed round -- unusually large for a European startup; while Fei-Fei Li's World Labs secured a whopping $1 billion last month alone. Now, AMI Labs joins the club with more funding than initially rumored. The French AI lab was reportedly seeking just €500 million last December, but ended up raising some €890 million, likely thanks to its team. In addition to LeCun's involvement as chairman and to LeBrun's track record as an entrepreneur, it also boasts Meta's VP for Europe Laurent Solly as COO, and high-profile researchers Saining Xie as chief science officer, Pascale Fung as chief research & innovation officer and Michael Rabbat as VP of world models. According to LeBrun, high interest gave the startup a chance to have its pick of investors, both in terms of expectation alignment and background. The round was co-led by Cathay Innovation, Greycroft, Hiro Capital, HV Capital and Bezos Expeditions, with participation from several other funds and industry-tied backers, as well as individuals including Tim and Rosemary Berners-Lee, Jim Breyer, Mark Cuban, Mark Leslie, Xavier Niel and Eric Schmidt. Value-add aside, this funding will give AMI Labs some meaningful runway to bankroll its two main cost centers: compute and talent. LeBrun said he will prioritize quality over quantity to build AMI Labs' team in four key locations: Paris, where it is headquartered; New York, where LeCun teaches at NYU; in Montreal, where its Rabbat is based; and in Singapore, both to recruit AI talent and to be close to future clients in Asia. Although AMI Labs has no plans to generate revenue for the time being, it still plans to engage with prospective customers early on. "We are developing world models that seek to understand the world, and you can't do that locked up in a lab. At some point, we need to put the model in a real-world situation with real data and real evaluations," LeBrun said. When the time comes, AMI Labs will turn to partners to explore deployments -- and Nabla is the first disclosed partner expecting to access these early models, but definitely not the last. "This may explain the presence and strong interest of certain industrial players and potential partners in the investment round," LeBrun said. In addition to its lead investors and angels, AMI Labs is backed by NVIDIA, Samsung, Sea, Temasek and Toyota Ventures, as well as French players Association Familiale Mulliez, Groupe Industriel Marcel Dassault and Publicis Groupe. Aglaé Lab, Alpha Intelligence Capital, Artémis, Bpifrance Digital Venture, New Legacy Ventures, SBVA and ZEBOX Ventures also participated. These investments may take a while to turn into commercial applications. But staying true to LeCun's beliefs, AMI Labs will publish papers as it goes. "We will also make a lot of code open source," said LeBrun, who had also worked at Meta's AI research laboratory, FAIR. While open research is "increasingly rare," this startup's founders still believe in it. "We think things move faster when they're open, and it's in our best interest to build a community and a research ecosystem around us."

Yann LeCun Raises $1 Billion to Build AI That Understands the Physical World

Advanced Machine Intelligence (AMI), a new Paris-based startup cofounded by Meta's former chief AI scientist Yann LeCun, announced Monday it has raised more than $1 billion to develop AI world models. LeCun argues that most human reasoning is grounded in the physical world, not language, and that AI world models are necessary to develop true human-level intelligence. "The idea that you're going to extend the capabilities of LLMs [large language models] to the point that they're going to have human-level intelligence is complete nonsense," he said in an interview with WIRED. The financing, which values the startup at $3.5 billion, was co-led by investors such as Cathay Innovation, Greycroft, Hiro Capital, HV Capital, and Bezos Expeditions. Other notable backers include Mark Cuban, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and French billionaire and telecommunications executive Xavier Niel. AMI (pronounced like the French word for friend) aims to build "a new breed of AI systems that understand the world, have persistent memory, can reason and plan, and are controllable and safe," the company says in a press release. The startup says it will be global from day one, with offices in Paris, Montreal, Singapore, and New York, where LeCun will continue working as a New York University professor in addition to leading the startup. AMI will be the first commercial endeavor for LeCun since his departure from Meta in November 2025. LeCun's startup represents a bet against many of the world's biggest AI labs like OpenAI, Anthropic, and even his former workplace, Meta, which believe that scaling up LLMs will eventually deliver AI systems with human-level intelligence or even superintelligence. LLMs have powered viral products such as ChatGPT and Claude Code, but LeCun has been one of the AI industry's most prominent researchers speaking out about the limitations of these AI models. LeCun is well known for being outspoken, but as a pioneer of modern AI that won a Turing award back in 2018, his skepticism carries weight. LeCun says AMI aims to work with companies in manufacturing, biomedical, robotics, and other industries that have lots of data. For example, he says AMI could build a realistic world model of an aircraft engine and work with the manufacturer to help them optimize for efficiency, minimize emissions, or ensure reliability. AMI was cofounded by LeCun and several leaders he worked with at Meta, including the company's former director of research science, Michael Rabbat; former vice president of Europe, Laurent Solly; and former senior director of AI research, Pascale Fung. Other cofounders include Alexandre LeBrun, former CEO of the AI health care startup Nabla, who will serve as AMI's CEO, and Saining Xie, a former Google DeepMind researcher who will be the startup's chief science officer. LeCun does not dismiss the overall utility of LLMs. Rather, in his view, these AI models are simply the tech industry's latest promising trend, and their success has created a "kind of delusion" among the people who build them. "It's true that [LLMs] are becoming really good at generating code, and it's true that they are probably going to become even more useful in a wide area of applications where code generation can help," says LeCun. "That's a lot of applications, but it's not going to lead to human-level intelligence at all." LeCun has been working on world models for years inside of Meta, where he founded the company's Fundamental AI Research lab, FAIR. But he's now convinced his research is best done outside the social media giant. He says it's become clear to him that the strongest applications of world models will be selling them to other enterprises, which doesn't fit neatly into Meta's core consumer business. As AI world models like Meta's Joint-Embedding Predictive Architecture (JEPA) became more sophisticated, "there was a reorientation of Meta's strategy where it had to basically catch up with the industry on LLMs and kind of do the same thing that other LLM companies are doing, which is not my interest," says LeCun. "So sometime in November, I went to see Mark Zuckerberg and told him. He's always been very supportive of [world model research], but I told him I can do this faster, cheaper, and better outside of Meta. I can share the cost of development with other companies ... His answer was, OK, we can work together."

Yann LeCun's New AI Startup Raises $1 Billion in Seed Funding

Yann LeCun, a pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence, has raised $1.03 billion for a nascent startup that promises to invent technology more capable of navigating the real world than existing AI products like ChatGPT. The startup, which is not yet three months old, is called Advanced Machine Intelligence, or AMI, and reached a valuation of $3.5 billion in the funding round, not including dollars raised. Based in Paris, the company's investors include major tech companies like Nvidia Corp. and Samsung Electronics Co. as well as global investors Cathay Innovation, Jeff Bezos' investment office Bezos Expeditions, Greycroft, Hiro Capital and HV Capital. Get the Tech Newsletter bundle. Get the Tech Newsletter bundle. Get the Tech Newsletter bundle. Bloomberg's subscriber-only tech newsletters, and full access to all the articles they feature. Bloomberg's subscriber-only tech newsletters, and full access to all the articles they feature. Bloomberg's subscriber-only tech newsletters, and full access to all the articles they feature. Bloomberg may send me offers and promotions. Plus Signed UpPlus Sign UpPlus Sign Up By submitting my information, I agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Service. The deal is one of the largest first funding rounds ever in Europe -- and the latest example of an AI luminary raising gobs of cash for a nascent research project after leaving a larger company. LeCun, who is co-founder and chairman at AMI, is revered as one of the "godfathers" of AI, credited for developing some of the algorithmic techniques that birthed modern chatbots and image-recognition systems. The French computer scientist ran research for Meta Platforms Inc. for years as the company's chief AI scientist. But since leaving Meta in 2025, LeCun has become a vocal critic of large language models -- the text-based systems behind ChatGPT and Meta's Llama -- as the best method to advance AI. With AMI, LeCun said the startup intentionally did not open up an office in Silicon Valley because it's "where a lot of the people and money are LLM-pilled." The ultimate goal, LeCun said in an interview, is to develop a "universal intelligence system" that can power anything from domestic robots to self-driving cars. AMI is one of several new startups building AI models to understand the physical world, beyond written text. For proponents, the method is a key ingredient for making the intelligent, futuristic robots that tech companies have long struggled to crack. While many of the startups in the sector are still focused on research versus commercialization, they've found eager investors willing to bet on the next frontier in the field. Fei-Fei Li, another pioneering AI scientist, recently co-founded a similar company called World Labs that quickly reached a $5 billion valuation. Alex LeBrun, a former Meta AI researcher and chief executive officer for French health tech startup Nabla Technologies, will serve as AMI's CEO. AMI doesn't plan to launch a consumer product, but instead will spend most of this year in research and development before partnering with large enterprises. LeCun said the startup is targeting industries that need to rely on AI models to make hardware and other physical goods, like cars, aerospace and pharmaceuticals. He also said that the company has had discussions with Meta about possible partnerships to use AMI's technology in its wearable devices. "There could be some products that get in the hands of consumers fairly early, depending on how the technology progresses," he said. While LeCun says that the defense industry is "not a focus," one of his investors is a unit of fighter jet manufacturer Dassault Aviation SA. The use of AI in the military is a hot button topic in Silicon Valley following the standoff between Anthropic and the US Defense Department. On Monday, Anthropic sued the Pentagon after the agency declared that the AI developer was a supply chain risk. LeCun, a frequent critic of Donald Trump, said elected officials should determine how AI systems are used in the military, not researchers or companies making the tech. "At least, I don't see myself as having any legitimacy deciding what society should do with the technology that we develop," he said. In addition to its Paris headquarters, AMI also has offices in New York, Montreal and Singapore. LeCun said it currently has a staff of about 20. Like other European AI developers, LeCun said that its global reach would be an advantage. "There is a lot of demand from the industry, from governments around the world, for a credible provider of AI technology that is neither American nor Chinese," he said. LeCun, who is French, helped set up Facebook's research lab in Paris and has advised several startups in the country, including OpenAI competitor Mistral. His new startup has raised from several investors in the country, including Bpifrance Digital Venture as well as several French tycoons, including telecom billionaire Xavier Niel. French media firm Publicis Groupe also participated in the round. Bloomberg earlier reported on partnership discussions between Meta and AMI as well as the startup's plans to raise at a valuation north of $3 billion.

Yann LeCun's AI start-up raises more than $1bn in Europe's largest seed round

Simply sign up to the Artificial intelligence myFT Digest -- delivered directly to your inbox. Meta's former chief artificial intelligence scientist Yann LeCun has raised more than $1bn for his new start-up in Europe's largest ever seed funding round. Advanced Machine Intelligence Labs announced on Tuesday that its first fundraising included backing from a global group of investors. These include France's Cathay Innovation, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos's Bezos Expeditions, Singapore's Temasek, Seoul-based SBVA and US chip giant Nvidia. The $1.03bn seed round is second only to US start-up Thinking Machines Lab, which raised $2bn last June, according to data from Dealroom. The new venture has a pre-money valuation of $3.5bn. It will be led by Alexandre LeBrun, former chief executive of French start-up Nabla, with LeCun serving as executive chair. Laurent Solly, who was Meta's vice-president for Europe, is joining as the chief operating officer. The company is launching with a dozen employees across offices in Paris, New York, Singapore and Montreal. The record-breaking fundraising underscores rising interest among investors in new approaches to AI that go beyond today's large language models. LeCun, a French-US scientist and Turing Award winner, has argued that systems trained mainly on text will struggle to achieve human-level reasoning. Instead, he is building "world models" that understand the physical environment with potential applications in robotics and transport. The start-up will build on work by LeCun at Meta on new AI "architecture" that can learn about the world through videos and spatial data rather than just language. These models are designed to retain memory and reason and to plan complex action sequences. "Anything that involves understanding the real world, we think large language models, and generative AI in general, is not the right solution," said chief executive LeBrun. "We have at least a year of research before deploying our first real-world applications. But this is not an applied AI company." It is part of a global race among venture investors to identify the next big AI giant, following the success of the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic. In 2025, AI companies attracted about 48 per cent of global venture fundraising, which reached $469bn, according to CB Insights. This meant AI start-ups alone raised roughly $225bn last year. AMI Labs' launch is the latest in a string of high-profile AI funding rounds in Europe this year. They include AI cloud provider Nscale, which announced a $2bn funding round on Monday, video AI start-up Synthesia and secretive AI chip start-up Olix. Last month, the FT reported that David Silver, one of Britain's top AI researchers, is in discussions to raise $1bn in a round led by Sequoia Capital for his new venture Ineffable Intelligence. "We want to be a global company . . . [and] the round structure reflects the way we want to build," LeBrun said. "There is incredible talent elsewhere, outside Silicon Valley." His former company Nabla will be the start-up's first partner, applying its new models in the healthcare industry, LeBrun added. LeCun's ex-employer Meta is not an investor in his new company but will form a "partnership" with AMI Labs that will grant the tech giant access to the technology it can commercialise. LeBrun said discussions around the details of the partnership were continuing. "Most of the large [AI] companies are in a race to improve a little bit, and they are right to do so, as they can't afford to lose the race," he said. "But we are starting in a completely new track . . . which is like a dream."

Ex-Meta AI chief Yann LeCun's AMI raises $1.03 billion for alternative AI approach

March 10 (Reuters) - Advanced Machine Intelligence, the startup founded by former Meta Platforms chief AI scientist Yann LeCun, said on Tuesday it raised $1.03 billion based on a $3.50 billion pre-money valuation, as it seeks to commercialize artificial intelligence systems built around reasoning, planning and "world models." The financing positions the company as a test of LeCun's belief that today's large language models fall short of human-level reasoning and autonomy. The funding round was co-led by Cathay Innovation, Greycroft, Hiro Capital, HV Capital and Bezos Expeditions. Meanwhile, ⁠Meta (META.O), opens new tab has been intensifying its push into LLM development. In June 2025, the company reorganized its AI efforts under a division called Meta Superintelligence Labs led by former Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang. LeCun joined Meta in 2013 to found Facebook AI Research, later known as FAIR, and became one of the company's most prominent AI leaders before departing at the end of 2025. In an interview with Reuters, LeCun said AMI aims to build systems capable of reasoning and planning in complex real-world settings. He ⁠added that current AI approaches based on predicting the next word or pixel will not produce broadly capable intelligent agents by themselves. The company's near-term target customers are organizations operating complex systems, including manufacturers, automakers, aerospace companies, biomedical firms and pharmaceutical groups. "We want to become ⁠the main provider of intelligent systems, regardless of what the application is," LeCun said. Over time, he added, the technology could also support consumer applications. "What consumers could be interacting with is ⁠a domestic robot. You need a domestic robot to have some level of common sense to really understand the physical world." LeCun said he was also talking ⁠with Meta about potentially deploying the technology in its Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. "That's probably one of the shorter term potential applications," he said. Reporting by Katie Paul in New York and Anhata Rooprai in Bengaluru; Editing by Alan Barona Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

Yann LeCun just raised $1bn to prove the AI industry has got it wrong

The Turing Award winner left Meta four months ago convinced that large language models are a dead end. Today he announced $1.03 billion in seed funding, Europe's largest ever, to build something different. In November 2025, Yann LeCun walked into Mark Zuckerberg's office and told his boss he was leaving. He had spent twelve years building Meta's AI research operation into one of the most respected in the world, and had become one of the industry's most vocal critics of the technology dominating it. Large language models, he argued, were a statistical illusion. Impressive, yes. Intelligent, no. He thought he could build something better, and he thought he could do it faster outside Meta than inside it. On Tuesday, investors put $1.03 billion behind that conviction. Advanced Machine Intelligence Labs, AMI, pronounced like the French word for "friend", announced its seed round on 10 March 2026, just four months after its founding. The round values the company at $3.5 billion on a pre-money basis and is believed to be the largest seed round ever raised by a European startup. Five firms co-led it: Cathay Innovation, Greycroft, Hiro Capital, HV Capital, and Bezos Expeditions, the vehicle through which Amazon founder Jeff Bezos makes personal investments. Nvidia, Toyota, Samsung, and Singapore's Temasek also participated, alongside French VC firm Daphni, South Korean investor SBVA, and a long list of prominent individuals including Tim and Rosemary Berners-Lee, venture capitalist Jim Breyer, entrepreneur Mark Cuban, and former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt. LeCun initially sought around €500 million, according to a leaked pitch deck reported by Sifted. Demand exceeded that figure significantly. He ended up with €890 million, roughly $1.03 billion, and told journalists this week that interest had been high enough that AMI could be selective about which investors it accepted. The company's headquarters are in Paris, with additional offices planned in New York, Montreal, and Singapore. LeCun, who holds dual French-American citizenship and remains a professor of computer science at New York University, will serve as executive chairman. Day-to-day operations will be led by Alexandre LeBrun, a French entrepreneur who previously founded and ran Nabla, the medical AI startup, and who now becomes AMI's chief executive. The rest of the founding team is drawn almost entirely from Meta's AI research organisation. Michael Rabbat, Meta's former director of research science, joins as vice president of world models. Laurent Solly, Meta's former vice president for Europe, becomes chief operating officer. Pascale Fung, a former senior director of AI research at Meta, takes the role of chief research and innovation officer. Saining Xie, previously at Google DeepMind, becomes chief science officer. What exactly is AMI building? The short answer is world models, a category of AI system that LeCun has been arguing for, and working on, for years. The longer answer requires understanding why he thinks the industry has taken a wrong turn. Large language models learn by predicting which word comes next in a sequence. They have been trained on vast quantities of human-generated text, and the results have been remarkable, ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini have demonstrated an ability to generate fluent, plausible language across an enormous range of subjects. But LeCun has spent years arguing, loudly and repeatedly, that this approach has fundamental limits. His alternative is JEPA: the Joint Embedding Predictive Architecture, a framework he first proposed in 2022. Rather than predicting the future state of the world in pixel-perfect or word-by-word detail, the approach that makes generative AI both powerful and prone to hallucination, JEPA learns abstract representations of how the world works, ignoring unpredictable surface detail. The idea is to build systems that understand physical reality the way humans and animals do: not through language, but through embodied experience. Within one to two years, LeCun told AFP, AMI plans to begin discussions with corporate partners. Within three to five years, he said, the goal is to produce "fairly universal intelligent systems" capable of being deployed across almost any domain requiring machine intelligence. He wants AMI, he added, to become "the main provider of intelligent systems." The timing and geography of the announcement are not coincidental. LeCun has been explicit about AMI's positioning as a European, and specifically French, counter to the American and Chinese AI giants. "We are one of the few frontier AI labs that are neither Chinese nor American," he has said. The choice of Paris as headquarters, and the involvement of French investors Cathay Innovation and Daphni, reflects that framing. Whether that ambition is achievable remains genuinely open. AMI has no product, no revenue, and no near-term prospect of either. LeCun acknowledged to journalists this week that the company would spend its first year focused entirely on research and development. World models, by his own account, are a long-term scientific project, not the kind of AI startup that ships a product in three months and posts revenue in six.

Turing Winner LeCun's New 'World Model' AI Lab Raises $1B In Europe's Largest Seed Round Ever

Advanced Machine Intelligence, a startup co-founded by computer science pioneer and former Meta AI chief Yann LeCun, said Tuesday that it has raised $1.03 billion to develop "world models," or AI designed to learn from and interact with the physical world. The funding for Paris-based AMI represents the largest seed round ever for a European startup and one of the region's largest fundings for an AI startup overall, per Crunchbase data. Bezos Expeditions, Cathay Innovation, Greycroft, Hiro Capital and HV Capital led the funding, which reportedly values AMI at $3.5 billion. AMI differs from the popular generative AI startups in that it aims to develop world models, or artificial intelligence that interacts with and learns from three-dimensional reality. "My prediction is that 'world models' will be the next buzzword," AMI Labs CEO Alexandre LeBrun told TechCrunch after the funding. "In six months, every company will call itself a world model to raise funding." His co-founder LeCun is considered one of the pioneers of the large language model approach to AI. In 2018, LeCun was one of the computer scientists who received the industry's prestigious A.M. Turing Award for his work on neural networks and learning algorithms. Their new startup, however, is premised on the idea that the two-dimensional approach used by LLMs is, by definition, limiting. To be truly useful, AI must be able to understand and interact with 3D reality, AMI's leaders argue. "Generative architecture trained by self-supervised learning mimic intelligence; they don't genuinely understand the world. Predicting tokens, though powerful, works best for discrete and low-dimensional tasks like information retrieval, summarization, coding, and mathematics," AMI CEO LeBrun wrote on LinkedIn. "However, factories, hospitals, and robots operating in open environments demand AI that grasps reality. And reality is not tokenized: it's continuous, noisy and high-dimensional. Despite their immense power, I do not believe that generative architectures are the path to achieving this true understanding." AMI's first partnership is with Nabla, a healthcare AI startup also headed by LeBrun. Funding to world-model AI While the bulk of AI startup funding thus far has gone to LLM-based generative AI giants, investors appear to be turning their attention to funding more companies like AMI that seek to bring artificial intelligence into the physical world. Late last month, Fei-Fei Li's San Francisco-based World Labs, another startup founded by an AI pioneer to work on foundation models for real-world AI, raised $1 billion in fresh funding. Fewer large deals for Europe's AI sector Global venture funding hit an all-time monthly record in February as OpenAI announced a $110 billion funding round -- by far the largest-ever investment in a private company. As global startup funding has increased in recent quarters, so has concentration into the AI sector and the dominant players, most of which are based in the U.S. Europe, by comparison, has seen only modest gains in its venture funding growth and just a handful of billion-dollar-plus deals for AI companies, including $2 billion for Paris-based Mistral AI last year and $2 billion for Nscale earlier this week.

French AI startup AMI announces $1 bn raised in funding

Paris (France) (AFP) - French artificial intelligence startup AMI, co-founded by Meta's former chief AI scientist Yann LeCun, announced Tuesday it has raised $1 billion to develop models able to understand the physical world. This first funding round for AMI (Advanced Machine Intelligence) was carried out by five investment funds and attracted investment from several big groups, including Toyota, Nvidia and Samsung. Notable names in tech, including former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, also bought in. LeCun told AFP that, with the funding round complete, AMI would bring aboard 20-30 people "in the very short term". He and five co-founders plan to "shift into a higher gear" on developing "world models", or AI systems designed to understand the physical world. Unlike the text-based large language models (LLMs) behind chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini, such AIs should understand the world "in the way animals and humans do," he added. "Yann LeCun is turning a new page in artificial intelligence. This is the France of researchers, builders and the bold. Bravo!" President Emmanuel Macron posted on X. Based in Paris with offices in New York, Singapore and Montreal, AMI was valued at around $3.5 billion before this funding round. 'Paradigm shift' LeCun announced his departure from Meta in November, after 12 years with the owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. He now serves as AMI's non-executive chairman, while Alexandre Lebrun is the Paris-based startup's CEO. Within three to five years, AMI plans to produce "fairly universal intelligent systems" that could be used for almost any task requiring intelligent machines, such as autonomous driving and robotics, LeCun said. "I am very clearly in the camp that believes we need a paradigm shift" from the AI reliance on LLMs, he told AFP. LeCun has been a vocal critic of major AI developers' laser focus on LLMs, which was one reason for why he left Meta -- although he insists he still has "a good relationship with Mark Zuckerberg". AMI's work will take up where LeCun left off with research at Meta on a new AI architecture dubbed JEPA. "It's a direct continuation of that project," he said. Researchers hope world models will allow AI systems to analyse and predict the behaviour of complex systems, such as a jet engine, a power plant or the organs of a human patient. LeCun, a dual French-American citizen who remains a computer science professor at New York University, said AMI would focus on research and development in its first year. Discussions with corporate partners could be held within six to 12 months, he added.

AI 'Godfather'Yann LeCun raises nearly $1 billion for his startup

His startup aims to develop AI systems that can make more informed decisions by leveraging data from cameras and sensors. AI pioneer Yann LeCun has raised $1.03 billion (nearly €900 million) and named a new CEO for his new artificial intelligence (AI) startup that will operate partly out of Paris. The French-American scientist announced the launch of Advanced Machine Intelligence (AMI) on social media Tuesday The startup aims to build world models, which are AI systems that learn from real-world data, such as information from sensors and cameras, rather than relying mainly on text prompts, according to the company's website. AMI says systems trained on this kind of data could make more accurate predictions about the consequences of their actions, which could help make them safer to use. The company hopes the technology will be used in industries where "reliability, controllability and safety really matter," such as automation, wearable devices, robotics and healthcare. AMI has already made its first senior hires, appointing serial AI entrepreneur Alex LeBrun as CEO and former Meta and Google research scientist Saining Xie as chief science officer. French President Emmanuel Macron said on social media site X that LeCun "opens a new chapter in artificial intelligence," with the launch of AMI. "This is the France of researchers, builders, and the bold. Bravo!" he wrote. LeCun won the Turing Award, the most prestigious prize in computer science, in 2018 alongside AI pioneers Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio, for their work on deep learning, a type of AI that learns patterns from large amounts of data. According to the company, AMI will operate from Paris, New York, Montreal, and Singapore.

Yann LeCun's new startup AMI Labs raises $1.03B to train world models - SiliconANGLE

Yann LeCun's new startup AMI Labs raises $1.03B to train world models AMI Labs, a new startup co-founded by artificial intelligence pioneer Yann LeCun, today announced that it has raised $1.03 billion in funding. The seed round was jointly led by Cathay Innovation, Greycroft, Hiro Capital, HV Capital, Jeff Bezos' Bezos Expeditions and several unnamed backers. They were joined by more than a dozen others including Nvidia Corp. and Samsung Electronics Co. AMI Labs is now valued at $3.5 billion. LeCun launched the company shortly after leaving Meta Platforms Inc. last year. He earlier headed the Facebook parent's AI research group for more than a decade, a capacity in which he oversaw the development of the Llama large language model series. Llama's launch was preceded by Meta's release of the ubiquitous PyTorch model development framework. LeCun is also known for his early work in the field of computer vision. In 1988, he developed LeNet, a series of image processing models that helped demonstrate the technology's usefulness. The AI family was the first of its kind to incorporate the backpropagation algorithm, a core component of modern neural networks that powers their learning capabilities. AMI Labs plans to develop world models that can analyze data from cameras and other sensors. LeCun told Wired that hardware design is one of the areas where the company hopes to apply its software. According to the publication, the AMI Labs envisions customers using its models for tasks such as analyzing aircraft component designs to find optimization opportunities. The company also plans to develop software for other verticals including healthcare and robotics. An AMI Labs job posting sheds some light on the robotics use cases that it intends to pursue. According to the listing, the company is developing models that can make predictions about the future state of a system's environment and use those predictions to plan "sequences of actions." Such technology could potentially help robots plan how to go about tasks such as preparing parcels. AMI Labs' website also contains clues about what architecture will underpin its models. One page states that the company intends to avoid "generative approaches," which encompasses designs such as LLMs' Transformer architecture. A job posting adds that AMI Labs will build neural networks based on "new architectures". During his time at Meta, LeCun developed an AI model architecture known as JEPA. One of the technology's flagship features is that it can ignore irrelevant details in input data. AMI Labs' website states that its AI models will be capable of "ignoring unpredictable details" in the data they process. Neural networks store visual information such as videos in abstract mathematical representations. In a Transformer model, each representation contains a small piece of data such as a single pixel. The representations used by the JEPA architecture store more complex, higher-level data such as entire images.

Yann LeCun's AI start-up AMI raises $1.03bn in seed funding

The seed funding round values the start-up at $3.5bn, despite having only been established this year. Advanced Machine Intelligence (AMI), which is an artificial intelligence (AI) start-up founded by former Meta AI chief Yann LeCun, has raised $1.03bn in seed funding. The round was co-led by Cathay Innovation, Greycroft, Hiro Capital, HV Capital and Bezos Expeditions. AMI was also supported by long-term global investors and strategic backers such as Toyota Ventures, New Legacy Ventures, Temasek, SBVA, Nvidia, Mark Cuban, Association Familiale Mulliez, Groupe industriel Marcel Dassault, Sea, and Alpha Intelligence Capital. Samsung and Bpifrance Digital Venture were also among the significant participants. The funds raised are being used to develop AMI and according to the organisation, the building of a new "breed of AI systems that understand the world, have persistent memory, can reason and plan, and are controllable and safe". Established earlier this year and based in Paris, AMI explained that the company is developing 'world models' that learn abstract representations of real-world sensor data - "ignoring unpredictable details" - and make predictions in representation space. According to AMI, world models allow agentic systems to predict the consequences of their actions and plan action sequences that accomplish tasks "subject to safety guardrails". Despite being a young start-up, AMI has already reached a valuation of $3.5bn after the seed round. It is the most recent company to receive funding for its focus on 'world models'. In February, World Labs, founded by the 'godmother of AI' Fei-Fei Li, raised $1bn to advance its own world model AI technology. The funding round was estimated in prior reports to potentially value the start-up at $5bn. World Labs describes itself as a "spatial intelligence company, building frontier models that can perceive, generate, reason and interact with the 3D world". It describes its AI products as "large world models". Commenting on the world models branch of AI, Alexandre LeBrun, the AMI Labs CEO, told TechCrunch: "My prediction is that 'world models' will be the next buzzword. In six months, every company will call itself a world model to raise funding." Updated, 12.40pm, 10 March 2026: This article was amended to clarify the correct amount raised by AMI in the seed funding round. Don't miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic's digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

Yann LeCun's AMI Labs hits $3.5 billion pre-money valuation

Advanced Machine Intelligence Labs raised $1.03 billion in seed funding at a $3.5 billion pre-money valuation. The funding round was co-led by Cathay Innovation, Greycroft, Hiro Capital, HV Capital, and Bezos Expeditions, with backing from Jeff Bezos and Mark Cuban among other investors. The raise is one of the largest pre-revenue AI raises in history. The funding positions AMI Labs as a high-profile bet on "world models" as an alternative to large language models. This valuation reflects a premium on elite AI researchers despite the company employing only about a dozen people and being less than three months old. The company aims to build systems capable of reasoning and planning in complex real-world settings. Yann LeCun, the company's founder and executive chairman, departed Meta Platforms at the end of 2025 after more than a decade leading its FAIR foundational AI research group. In a Reuters interview, LeCun said AMI aims to become a provider of intelligent systems across applications. "We want to become the main provider of intelligent systems, regardless of what the application is," LeCun said. Near-term target industries include manufacturers, automakers, aerospace companies, and pharmaceutical groups. LeCun stated these industries require understanding physics and causality more than generating text. LeCun revealed talks with Meta about deploying AMI's technology in its Ray-Ban smart glasses, describing it as a shorter-term potential application. Alexandre LeBrun, co-founder of French health-tech startup Nabla, serves as CEO. LeCun holds the role of executive chairman. Through a partnership with Nabla, AMI Labs plans to develop FDA-certifiable AI systems for healthcare. NVIDIA has been investing heavily in AI startups, pouring roughly $53 billion across 170 deals according to PitchBook data cited by Forbes. World Labs, founded by AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li, is reportedly in talks to raise funding at a $5 billion valuation after launching Marble, a product that generates physically accurate 3D environments. LeCun acknowledged commercial products may take years to materialize. The company initially operates like a research lab exploring untested concepts. Consumer applications could eventually include domestic robots that need common sense to understand the physical world.

French AI startup AMI raises $1B to develop 'universal intelligent systems'

French artificial intelligence startup AMI on Tuesday said it has raised $1 billion to develop AI systems designed to understand the physical world "in the way animals and humans do", unlike the language-based models behind chatbots such as ChatGPT. The company said it expected to produce "fairly universal intelligent systems" within five years. French artificial intelligence startup AMI - co-founded by Meta's former chief AI scientist Yann LeCun - announced Tuesday it has raised $1 billion to develop models able to understand the physical world. This first funding round for AMI - which stands for Advanced Machine Intelligence - was carried out by five investment funds and attracted investment from several big groups, including Toyota, Nvidia and Samsung. Notable names in tech also bought in, among them former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. AMI was valued around $3.5 billion before this funding round. LeCun announced his departure from Meta in November, after 12 years with the company that owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. He now serves as AMI's non-executive chairman, while Alexandre Lebrun is the Paris-based startup's CEO. LeCun told AFP that, with the funding round complete, AMI would now proceed with adding "between 20 and 30" hires "in the very short term". Along with AMI's five other co-founders, he said he plans to "shift into a higher gear" on developing "world models" - AI systems designed to understand the physical world. That goal, he added, aims to have AI understand the world "in the way animals and humans do" - unlike the large language models (LLMs) behind chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini. Within three to five years, AMI plans to produce "fairly universal intelligent systems" that could be used for almost any task requiring intelligent machines, such as autonomous driving and robotics. "I am very clearly in the camp that believes we need a paradigm shift" from the AI reliance on LLMs, LeCun told AFP. The French-American scientist, who continues to be a computer science professor at New York University, said AMI would focus on research and development in its first year. Discussions with corporate partners could be held within six to 12 months, he added.

Yann LeCun's AI start-up AMI raises $1.3bn in seed funding

The latest funding round gives the start-up a valuation of $3.5bn, despite having only been established less than three months ago. Advanced Machine Intelligence (AMI), which is an artificial intelligence (AI) start-up founded by former Meta AI chief Yann LeCun, has announced the raising of more than $1bn in seed funding. The round was co-led by Cathay Innovation, Greycroft, Hiro Capital, HV Capital and Bezos Expeditions. AMI was also supported by long-term global investors and strategic backers such as Toyota Ventures, New Legacy Ventures, Temasek, SBVA, NVIDIA, Mark Cuban, Association Familiale Mulliez, Groupe industriel Marcel Dassault, Sea, and Alpha Intelligence Capital. Samsung and Bpifrance Digital Venture were also among the significant participants. The funds raised are being used to develop AMI and according to the organisation, the building of a new "breed of AI systems that understand the world, have persistent memory, can reason and plan and are controllable and safe". AMI has also stated that the platform is growing its team of researchers and builders, in Paris, New York, Montreal and Singapore. Established earlier this year and based in Paris, France, AMI explained that the company is developing 'world models' that learn abstract representations of real-world sensor data, ignore unpredictable details and make predictions in representation space. According to AMI, world models allow agentic systems to predict the consequences of their actions and plan action sequences that accomplish tasks. Despite being a young start-up, AMI has already reached a valuation of $3.5bn, which is perhaps indicative of a marketplace that is moving towards greater recognition of nascent projects that explore physical space. In January of this year, Fei-Fei Li, the 'godmother of AI', was reported to be in talks to raise a major investment that would value her start-up World Labs at $5bn. World Labs describes itself as a "spatial intelligence company, building frontier models that can perceive, generate, reason and interact with the 3D world". It describes its AI products as "large world models". Commenting on the potential of world models, Alexandre LeBrun, the AMI Labs CEO, told TechCrunch, "My prediction is that 'world models' will be the next buzzword. In six months, every company will call itself a world model to raise funding." Don't miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic's digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

Yann LeCun's Paris A.I. Startup AMI Labs Raises Record $1B Seed Round

LeCun's AMI Labs aims to move beyond language models, building A.I. that can truly understand and interact with the real world. In November, Yann LeCun left Meta after 12 years over disagreements with Mark Zuckerberg over the future of A.I. Frustrated with the limitations of large language models (LLMs), the French computer scientist founded AMI Labs, a Paris-based startup focused on developing "world models." The startup announced today (March 10) that it has raised $1 billion in what is Europe's largest-ever seed round. 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 The funding values AMI at $3.5 billion pre-money and includes an array of high-profile backers such as Nvidia, Mark Cuban, Eric Schmidt, and Jeff Bezos, who co-led the round alongside venture capital firms Cathay Innovation, Greycroft, Hiro Capital, and HV Capital. LeCun will serve as executive chairman, guiding AMI's long-term goal of building A.I. systems capable of understanding complex real-world data. LeCun has hired Alex LeBrun, his former colleague at Meta, as CEO of AMI. LeBrun previously worked on Meta's Fundamental A.I. Research (FAIR) team, which LeCun led for more than a decade. He also co-founded Nabla, a startup that builds A.I. tools for clinicians. In a LinkedIn post today, LeBrun explained that "world models," unlike current LLMs, can predict the consequences of actions and plan sequences to accomplish tasks. "AMI will advance A.I. research and develop applications where reliability, controllability, and safety really matter," he wrote, citing areas such as automation, robotics, healthcare and wearable devices. LeCun, who moved from France to the U.S. in the 1980s to work at AT&T Bell Laboratories, became a foundational figure in machine learning. He earned the 2018 Turing Award for groundbreaking work in neural networks. His departure from Meta last November followed his public criticism of LLMs as a "dead end" for achieving truly intelligent systems. The move coincided with Meta's internal restructuring around Alexandr Wang, the 29-year-old founder and former CEO of Scale AI, who now leads Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL). LeCun has been critical of Wang's leadership, calling him "inexperienced." Despite their split, LeCun has said AMI could one day collaborate with Meta on projects like its Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. Other key members of AMI's founding team include Saining Xie, a computer science professor at New York University who will serve as the startup's chief science officer. Former Meta executives Laurent Solly and Michael Rabbat are stepping up as AMI's chief operating officer and vice president of world models, respectively. Pascale Fung, an engineering professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, is the startup's chief research and innovation officer. The company is also hiring across offices in Paris, New York, Montreal and Singapore. According to PitchBook, AMI's $1 billion raise is Europe's largest seed round to date and marks another milestone in the fast-evolving world models sector. Other key players include Fei-Fei Li's World Labs, which raised $1 billion last month, and General Intuition, which raised $134 million in October. World models, or A.I. systems trained to simulate and reason about physical environments rather than just generate text, are attracting growing interest from researchers skeptical that LLMs can understand reality. AMI plans to focus first on advancing world model research before pursuing commercial applications, with early use cases likely in factories and hospitals. One of AMI's first external partners will be Nabla, where LeBrun will remain chairman and chief A.I. scientist. The partnership will give Nabla early access to AMI's research, testing how world model-based A.I. performs in the fast-paced, high-stakes setting of clinical care.

Ex-Meta AI chief Yann LeCun's AMI raises $1.03 billion for alternative AI approach

AMI aims to build systems capable of reasoning and planning in complex real-world settings, LeCun said in an interview with Reuters. He added that current AI approaches based on predicting the next word or pixel will not produce broadly capable intelligent agents by themselves. Advanced Machine Intelligence, the startup founded by former Meta Platforms chief AI scientist Yann LeCun, said on Tuesday it raised $1.03 billion based on a $3.50 billion pre-money valuation, as it seeks to commercialize artificial intelligence systems built around reasoning, planning and "world models." The financing positions the company as a test of LeCun's belief that today's ⁠large language ⁠models fall short of human-level reasoning and autonomy. The funding round was co-led by Cathay Innovation, Greycroft, Hiro Capital, HV Capital and Bezos Expeditions. Meanwhile, Meta has been intensifying its push into LLM development. In June 2025, the company reorganized its AI efforts under a division called Meta Superintelligence Labs led by former Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang. LeCun joined Meta ⁠in 2013 to found Facebook AI Research, later known as FAIR, and became one of the company's most prominent AI leaders before ⁠departing at the end of 2025. In an interview with Reuters, LeCun said AMI aims to build systems capable of reasoning and planning in complex real-world settings. He added that current AI approaches based on predicting the next word or pixel will not produce broadly capable intelligent agents by themselves. The company's near-term target customers are organizations operating complex systems, including manufacturers, automakers, aerospace companies, biomedical firms and pharmaceutical groups. "We want to become the main provider of intelligent systems, regardless of what the application is," LeCun said. Over time, he ⁠added, the technology could also support consumer applications. "What consumers could be interacting with is a domestic robot. You need a domestic robot to have some level of common sense to really understand the physical world." LeCun said he was also talking with Meta about potentially deploying the technology in its Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. "That's probably one of the shorter term potential applications," he said.

Meta Vet Yann LeCun's AI Startup Pulls in $1 Billion | 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. The company announced the new funding Tuesday (March 10), saying it would help it build artificial intelligence (AI) systems that "understand the world, have persistent memory, can reason and plan, and are controllable and safe." AMI (Advanced Machine Intelligence) was founded by Yann LeCun, who stepped down from Meta late last year. According to its website, AMI is developing what it calls "world models" that "learn abstract representations of real-world sensor data, ignoring unpredictable details, and that make predictions in representation space." "Action-conditioned world models allow agentic systems to predict the consequences of their actions, and to plan action sequences to accomplish a task, subject to safety guardrails," the company added. In an interview with Reuters, LeCun said the company's target customers are organizations running complex systems, such those in the automotive, aerospace, biomedical, manufacturing and pharmaceutical sectors. In time, AMI's tech could find its way to consumers, he added. "What consumers could be interacting with is a domestic robot," LeCun said. "You need a domestic robot to have some level of common sense to really understand the physical world." As PYMNTS wrote last year, LeCun is among a growing number of AI scientists who have shifted into entrepreneurial roles, along with former OpenAI Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati (founder of Thinking Machines) and Stanford professor Fei-Fei Li, who co-founded World Labs to advance spatial intelligence AI and achieved unicorn status soon after its debut. "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," the report said. "Their companies, many built on open-research principles, are attracting record funding rounds as investors shift capital toward scientist-led innovation." Meanwhile, Meta is reportedly building a new applied AI engineering organization that will work with the company's Superintelligence Lab to make AI models faster The new organization will be headed by Maher Saba, who is a vice president in Meta's Reality Labs division, per a report last week by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ). "Building great models isn't just about researchers and compute; it requires real-world data, feedback and evals," Saba wrote in a memo to employees, per the WSJ. "This creates the flywheel that turns a strong model into a leading one. Lately, we've seen some excellent gains from reinforcement learning and post-training and we believe we have a real opportunity to move faster and pull ahead if we double down on these efforts."

Ex-Meta AI chief Yann LeCun's AMI raises US$1.03 billion for alternative AI approach

Advanced Machine Intelligence, the startup founded by former Meta Platforms chief AI scientist Yann LeCun, said on Tuesday it raised $1.03 billion based on a $3.50 billion pre-money valuation, as it seeks to commercialize artificial intelligence systems built around reasoning, planning and "world models." The financing positions the company as a test of LeCun's belief that today's large language models fall short of human-level reasoning and autonomy. The funding round was co-led by Cathay Innovation, Greycroft, Hiro Capital, HV Capital and Bezos Expeditions. Meanwhile, Meta has been intensifying its push into LLM development. In June 2025, the company reorganized its AI efforts under a division called Meta Superintelligence Labs led by former Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang. LeCun joined Meta in 2013 to found Facebook AI Research, later known as FAIR, and became one of the company's most prominent AI leaders before departing at the end of 2025. In an interview with Reuters, LeCun said AMI aims to build systems capable of reasoning and planning in complex real-world settings. He added that current AI approaches based on predicting the next word or pixel will not produce broadly capable intelligent agents by themselves. The company's near-term target customers are organizations operating complex systems, including manufacturers, automakers, aerospace companies, biomedical firms and pharmaceutical groups. "We want to become the main provider of intelligent systems, regardless of what the application is," LeCun said. Over time, he added, the technology could also support consumer applications. "What consumers could be interacting with is a domestic robot. You need a domestic robot to have some level of common sense to really understand the physical world." LeCun said he was also talking with Meta about potentially deploying the technology in its Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. "That's probably one of the shorter term potential applications," he said.

What is Yann LeCun planning with his startup AMI Labs?

He is considered one of the godfathers of artificial intelligence, he left Meta last November, he has just created a unicorn with his first fundraising round, and he is French: let's take a look at Yann LeCun's ultra-ambitious project. After studying at the Sorbonne and then in Canada before moving to the United States, Yann LeCun became interested in 'deep learning' at the very beginning of his career, a branch of AI based on neural networks capable of learning from large amounts of data. In 2013, he joined Meta, where he became Chief AI Scientist and took charge of the group's artificial intelligence research. In 2018, along with two other researchers, he received the Alan Turing Award (the Nobel Prize of computing) for his work on deep neural networks. Last November, he left Meta on good terms with Mark Zuckerberg despite differences over their respective ambitions for the future of AI. Since then, he has been distilling information about a particularly ambitious project, to the point of attracting the attention of the biggest names in global tech. All this led him to a $1bn fundraising round, even though he was initially aiming for half that amount. With a team that includes leading profiles from the research world, Yann LeCun is advocating for a break from the dominant trajectory of AI so far. Contrary to the current craze for Large Language Models (LLMs), which, although rich in knowledge, in his opinion, show intellectual weakness, he is betting on another approach: 'World Models'. Hie aims to make machines truly autonomous, capable of reasoning, memorizing, and planning actions in real and complex systems, while maintaining a strong commitment to open-source development. According to him, language models alone will never achieve intelligence close to that of humans. He believes the path forward first requires an understanding of the physical world. Beyond a simple technological bet, Yann LeCun also defends another way of developing AI. The goal of AMI is to learn the laws of physics from videos and spatial data, in order to allow the machine to perceive reality better than any current system. The challenge is to bring about an intelligence capable of evolving and acting in the real world. The envisioned applications are numerous. Yann LeCun and his team have already mentioned opportunities in heavy and demanding sectors, such as robotics, industry, transport, or healthcare, but also, eventually, in domestic robotics. Specifically, he has, for example, mentioned the possibility of AMI modeling an aircraft engine and collaborating with a manufacturer to optimize its efficiency, based on precise industrial issues. To launch AMI Labs, Yann LeCun has surrounded himself with former Meta employees. These include Michael Rabbat, former head of scientific research, Laurent Solly, former vice-president of the group, and Pascale Fung, former head of AI research. The table of co-founders also includes Saining Xie, a former Google DeepMind researcher, called upon to lead the scientific strategy, as well as Alexandre Lebrun, former CEO of Nabla, who will lead the company. The first partner of AMI will also be Nabla, an AI applied to healthcare that serves as a clinical assistant. The young startup has above all made an impression by signing the largest first funding round in European history. AMI raised $1bn for a valuation now estimated at $3.5bn, even though the project is still at the stage of scientific experimentation. About twenty investors participated in the operation. On the tech side, we find Nvidia, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, as well as Jeff Bezos' fund. Several European funds are also present, as well as a particularly visible French contingent with Bpifrance, but also some of the largest fortunes in France, including Xavier Niel, the Mulliez family, Dassault, Arnault and Saadé. Asia is also represented, with Toyota Ventures, Samsung, the Singaporean fund Temasek, and a fund linked to SoftBank.

Ex-Meta AI chief Yann LeCun's AMI raises $1.03 billion for alternative AI approach

March 10 (Reuters) - Advanced Machine Intelligence, the startup founded by former Meta Platforms chief AI scientist Yann LeCun, said on Tuesday it raised $1.03 billion based on a $3.50 billion pre-money valuation, as it seeks to commercialize artificial intelligence systems built around reasoning, planning and "world models." The financing positions the company as a test of LeCun's belief that today's large language models fall short of human-level reasoning and autonomy. The funding round was co-led by Cathay Innovation, Greycroft, Hiro Capital, HV Capital and Bezos Expeditions. Meanwhile, Meta has been intensifying its push into LLM development. In June 2025, the company reorganized its AI efforts under a division called Meta Superintelligence Labs led by former Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang. LeCun joined Meta in 2013 to found Facebook AI Research, later known as FAIR, and became one of the company's most prominent AI leaders before departing at the end of 2025. In an interview with Reuters, LeCun said AMI aims to build systems capable of reasoning and planning in complex real-world settings. He added that current AI approaches based on predicting the next word or pixel will not produce broadly capable intelligent agents by themselves. The company's near-term target customers are organizations operating complex systems, including manufacturers, automakers, aerospace companies, biomedical firms and pharmaceutical groups. "We want to become the main provider of intelligent systems, regardless of what the application is," LeCun said. Over time, he added, the technology could also support consumer applications. "What consumers could be interacting with is a domestic robot. You need a domestic robot to have some level of common sense to really understand the physical world." LeCun said he was also talking with Meta about potentially deploying the technology in its Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. "That's probably one of the shorter term potential applications," he said. (Reporting by Katie Paul in New York and Anhata Rooprai in Bengaluru; Editing by Alan Barona)