Yann LeCun, the legendary artificial intelligence researcher who helped build and shape Meta’s AI strategy, is already underway on his next big thing. Less than a month after announcing his departure from Mark Zuckerberg’s social media empire, the 65-year-old Turing Award winner has launched fundraising talks that would value his new venture at roughly $3.5 billion before it’s even launched.
The startup, Advanced Machine Intelligence (AMI) Labs, aims to create what LeCun calls “world models”: AI systems that understand physics, maintain persistent memory, and plan complex actions rather than simply predicting the next word. The company plans to establish its headquarters in Paris early next year, with LeCun serving as executive chairman. He’s even picked the CEO already: On Thursday, LeCun announced on LinkedIn that he’s selected Alexandre LeBrun, founder of French health-tech startup Nabla, to take on the chief executive role.
Why LeCun is abandoning Silicon Valley
The €500 million (~$586 million) funding target would be one of the largest prelaunch raises in AI history, reflecting investor confidence in LeCun’s vision of moving beyond today’s large language models.
“Silicon Valley is completely hypnotized by the current models of generative AI,” LeCun explained earlier this month at the AI-Pulse conference. “To pursue this kind of new research, you have to go outside the Valley—to Paris.”
LeCun’s exit from Meta after 12 years—five as founding director of Facebook AI Research and seven as chief AI scientist—had been rumored for weeks before he confirmed it on Nov. 18. His departure coincides with Meta’s strategic pivot toward more powerful LLM-based models under new chief AI officer Alexandr Wang, the twentysomething founder of Scale AI.
While Meta will not invest in AMI Labs, the companies plan to forge a partnership, allowing LeCun to continue his research while maintaining ties to his former employer.
The AI bubble grows bigger
The spectacular valuation for a pre-revenue startup has amplified concerns about an AI investment bubble. Industry leaders have warned that excitement around AI may be outpacing business fundamentals, and LeCun’s fundraising could test whether even the most respected names in the field can command premium valuations without proven commercial traction. The startup faces competition from well-funded European rivals like Black Forest Labs, valued at $4 billion, and Quantexa at $2.6 billion.
LeCun’s skepticism about AI’s current direction has been clear. Earlier this year, during an appearance on Alex Kantrowitz’s Big Technology podcast, he said: “We are not going to get to human-level AI just by scaling LLMs,” arguing they cannot achieve that milestone because they simply predict text rather than truly understand the world. His startup, AMI Labs, on the other hand, aims to develop systems that observe and interact with the physical environment like humans do, potentially revolutionizing robotics, transportation, and health care.
A return to European roots
The French computer scientist, who won the 2018 Turing Award alongside Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio, has long advocated for European AI talent. He convinced Meta to open its FAIR lab in Paris in 2015 and now argues the city offers the right environment for his next-generation research.
LeCun’s social media post announcing his departure emphasized continuity: “I am creating a startup company to continue the Advanced Machine Intelligence research program (AMI) I have been pursuing over the last several years with colleagues at FAIR, at NYU, and beyond.” He described the goal as bringing about “the next big revolution in AI: systems that understand the physical world, have persistent memory, can reason, and can plan complex action sequences.”
The partnership with Nabla provides immediate applications for AMI’s technology. The health-tech company will gain first access to world model technologies, enabling it to develop FDA-certifiable AI systems for health care. LeBrun’s transition from Nabla CEO to AMI Labs CEO signals deep integration between the two companies, though he will remain chairman and chief AI scientist at Nabla.
