Yann LeCun's startup has a new CEO — and $1 billion

Yann LeCun's artificial intelligence startup, AMI Labs, has successfully raised over $1 billion in seed funding while announcing a significant leadership change. Alex LeBrun, a well-known entrepreneur and ex-Facebook researcher, has been appointed as the new CEO. He shared the news in a recent post on X, expressing excitement about joining LeCun and the founding team in their ambitious quest to create intelligent systems that genuinely comprehend the real world. The remarkable fundraising effort, totaling $1.03 billion, was co-led by notable investors including Cathay Innovation, Greycroft, Hiro Capital, HV Capital, and Bezos Expeditions, among others. AMI Labs is actively assembling a diverse team of researchers and engineers, with operations expanding across key global cities such as Paris, New York, Montreal, and Singapore. In addition to LeBrun, Saining Xie, an AI researcher and computer science professor at New York University, has joined the founding team as co-founder and chief science officer. Xie emphasized that AMI Labs is not a traditional research lab, signaling a departure from conventional approaches in the field. LeCun, who previously led AI research at Meta for 12 years, unveiled plans for the startup in November. AMI Labs aims to develop sophisticated world models—AI systems that aim to comprehend and mirror the workings of the real world. LeCun has positioned the startup as one of the few leading AI labs that is neither American nor Chinese. During a December event in Paris, LeCun mentioned that Meta would collaborate with AMI Labs, although it would not be making any financial investments in the new venture. He remarked on the potential of the startup's architecture, which has garnered interest from Mark Zuckerberg, who believes it could represent the future of AI. LeCun has been vocal about his disagreements with certain decisions made by Zuckerberg, particularly regarding the dismantling of Meta’s robotics team within FAIR. In interviews, he has expressed concerns over how research should be conducted and criticized the lack of experience among some leaders in understanding research dynamics. "You don’t dictate to a researcher what to do," he asserted, reinforcing the importance of creative freedom in the research environment.