Meta’s chief AI scientist is reportedly in early talks to raise $585 million for his new startup.
That’s according to a report Thursday (Dec. 18) by the Financial Times (FT), which says this funding would value Yann LeCun’s company — called Advanced Machine Intelligence (AMI) Labs — at around $3 billion before its official launch.
LeCun, who announced his pending departure from Meta last month, has tapped Alexandre LeBrun, founder of French health tech startup Nabla, to serve as the startup’s CEO, the report added, citing sources familiar with the matter.
According to the report, the startup will focus on developing a new generation of superintelligent artificial intelligence systems by constructing what are known as “world models.” These are AI models said to have the ability to understand the physical world and have a broad range of applications, like robotics and transport.
AMI Labs will build on LeCun’s efforts at Meta to create a new AI architecture that can learn about the world via videos and spatial data instead of just language, has persistent memory, can reason and can plan complex action sequences.
LeCun joins a growing cohort of AI scientists moving into entrepreneurial roles, along with former OpenAI Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati who founded Thinking Machines Lab, which is valued at about $10 billion.
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Another OpenAI exec, Co-founder Ilya Sutskever, raised $2 billion for his Safe Superintelligence startup in April, valuing that company at $32 billion.
As PYMNTS wrote last month, LeCun’s decision to launch a new company comes as his old one faces turbulence in its artificial intelligence operations. Meta announced in October it would cut 600 jobs in its AI department to make it more agile, part of a move to create a unified TBD Lab to streamline product and research functions.
Meta’s AI spending has also drawn scrutiny from investors. The company’s third-quarter earnings showed its total costs and expenses climbing 32% year over year to $30.7 billion. Capital expenditures came to $19.4 billion, a record quarterly high. Meta also projected full-year expenses of $116 billion to $118 billion and capex of $70 billion to $72 billion.
Losing the scientist who helped build much of Meta’s early credibility in the artificial intelligence space could cause even greater skepticism among investors, the report noted.
“Meanwhile, Meta’s AI ambitions come with execution risks,” PYMNTS added. “CEO Mark Zuckerberg has called the company’s mission ‘building personal superintelligence for everyone,’ while the company continues to spend on compute, data centers and AI talent with unclear near-term monetization.”
