Meta AI scientist Yann LeCun leaves to launch $3.5 billion startup
Yann LeCun, the chief artificial intelligence scientist at Meta Platforms, is preparing to leave the company at the end of 2025 as he moves toward launching a new artificial intelligence venture.
The new company is expected to be announced in January 2026 and will be called Advanced Machine Intelligence Labs (AMI Labs). LeCun is set to take an executive chair role at AMI Labs.
Early fundraising discussions are targeting about $500 million, implying a pre-launch valuation of roughly $3.5 billion, despite the company not having released products yet.
Alexandre LeBrun, the co-founder and chief executive officer of French health technology company Nabla, is expected to become chief executive officer of AMI Labs. Nabla has said LeBrun will transition out of his role as part of a planned change, with Nabla’s leadership being restructured during the handover.
AMI Labs is expected to focus on building a new generation of artificial intelligence systems designed to better understand and operate in the physical world. The work is linked to the idea of “world models,” which use data such as images and video to help systems reason about real-world environments and actions.
LeCun’s move comes as major technology companies and research leaders continue to compete for talent and capital in advanced artificial intelligence development.LeCun is widely known for foundational research in machine learning and has led artificial intelligence work at Meta in recent years
