Yann LeCun's AMI raises $1B for AI world models, challenges LLM approach

What AMI is building

Advanced Machine Intelligence (AMI), a Paris-based startup cofounded by Meta's former chief AI scientist Yann LeCun, announced it has raised more than $1 billion to develop AI world models. The financing values the startup at $3.5 billion.

AMI 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 startup represents a bet against AI labs like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta that believe scaling up LLMs will deliver human-level intelligence.

LeCun's argument against LLM-only approaches

"The idea that you're going to extend the capabilities of LLMs to the point that they're going to have human-level intelligence is complete nonsense," LeCun said in the interview. He argues that most human reasoning is grounded in the physical world, not language.

LeCun doesn't dismiss LLMs entirely: "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. That's a lot of applications, but it's not going to lead to human-level intelligence at all."

Practical applications and business model

AMI will work with companies in manufacturing, biomedical, robotics, and other industries that have lots of data. For example, LeCun 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.

The strongest applications of world models will be selling them to other enterprises, which doesn't fit neatly into Meta's core consumer business. LeCun says he can develop this technology "faster, cheaper, and better outside of Meta" and "share the cost of development with other companies."

Key details about the company

• Co-led by investors including Cathay Innovation, Greycroft, Hiro Capital, HV Capital, and Bezos Expeditions
• Other backers include Mark Cuban, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and French billionaire Xavier Niel
• Global from day one with offices in Paris, Montreal, Singapore, and New York
• LeCun will continue as a New York University professor while leading the startup
• Co-founders include former Meta leaders Michael Rabbat, Laurent Solly, and Pascale Fung
• Alexandre LeBrun (former CEO of Nabla) serves as CEO
• Saining Xie (former Google DeepMind researcher) is chief science officer

Technical background and open source plans

LeCun has been working on world models for years inside Meta, where he founded the FAIR lab. He developed Meta's Joint-Embedding Predictive Architecture (JEPA) as part of this research.

AMI plans to build open source technology, with LeCun arguing that "artificial intelligence is too powerful to be controlled by any one private company." While Meta is not an investor, LeCun is talking with the company about collaboration, including potential for AMI's world models to power assistants in Meta's smart glasses.