{"id":530893,"date":"2026-03-10T11:12:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T11:12:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/530893\/"},"modified":"2026-03-10T11:12:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T11:12:08","slug":"yann-lecuns-ami-labs-raises-1-03-billion-to-build-world-models","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/530893\/","title":{"rendered":"Yann LeCun’s AMI Labs raises $1.03 billion to build world models"},"content":{"rendered":"

AMI Labs<\/a>, the new venture cofounded by Turing Prize winner Yann LeCun<\/a> after he left Meta, has raised $1.03 billion at a $3.5 billion pre-money valuation. AMI is working on world models, or AI that learns from reality, not just from language.<\/p>\n

This category has fewer players than generative AI, but maybe not for long. \u201cMy prediction is that \u2018world models\u2019 will be the next buzzword,\u201d AMI Labs CEO Alexandre LeBrun told TechCrunch. \u201cIn six months, every company will call itself a world model to raise funding.\u201d<\/p>\n

LeBrun said this with a smile because he thinks AMI Labs is fundamentally different: its goal is to understand the real world. This could have applications in healthcare, where AMI Labs\u2019 first partner will be Nabla<\/a>, the digital health startup of which he\u2019s now chairman.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As CEO of Nabla, LeBrun had reached the same conclusion as LeCun on the limitations of large language models (LLMs) where hallucinations could have life-threatening repercussions. But he also knows it will take a while for the startup to offer a viable alternative based on JEPA<\/a>, the Joint Embedding Predictive Architecture proposed by LeCun in 2022.<\/p>\n

\u201cAMI Labs is a very ambitious project, because it starts with fundamental research. It\u2019s not your typical applied AI startup that can release a product in three months, have revenue in six months and make $10 million in [annual recurring revenue] in 12 months,\u201d LeBrun said. In contrast, it could take years for world models to go from theory to commercial applications.<\/p>\n

Despite this time horizon, companies developing world models have attracted big checks. SpAItial raised a $13 million seed round<\/a> \u2014 unusually large for a European startup; while Fei-Fei Li\u2019s World Labs secured a whopping $1 billion<\/a> last month alone. Now, AMI Labs joins the club with more funding than initially rumored.<\/p>\n

The French AI lab was reportedly seeking just \u20ac500 million<\/a> last December, but ended up raising some \u20ac890 million, likely thanks to its team. In addition to LeCun\u2019s involvement as chairman and to LeBrun\u2019s track record as an entrepreneur<\/a>, it also boasts Meta\u2019s VP for Europe Laurent Solly as COO, and high-profile researchers Saining Xie as chief science officer, Pascale Fung as chief research & innovation officer and Michael Rabbat as VP of world models.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Techcrunch event<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco, CA
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 13-15, 2026\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

According to LeBrun, high interest gave the startup a chance to have its pick of investors, both in terms of expectation alignment and background. The round was co-led by Cathay Innovation, Greycroft, Hiro Capital, HV Capital and Bezos Expeditions, with participation from several other funds and industry-tied backers, as well as individuals including Tim and Rosemary Berners-Lee, Jim Breyer, Mark Cuban, Mark Leslie, Xavier Niel and Eric Schmidt.<\/p>\n

Value-add aside, this funding will give AMI Labs some meaningful runway to bankroll its two main cost centers: compute and talent. LeBrun said he will prioritize quality over quantity to build AMI Labs\u2019 team in four key locations: Paris, where it is headquartered; New York, where LeCun teaches at NYU; in Montreal, where its Rabbat is based; and in Singapore, both to recruit AI talent and to be close to future clients in Asia.<\/p>\n

Although AMI Labs has no plans to generate revenue for the time being, it still plans to engage with prospective customers early on. \u201cWe are developing world models that seek to understand the world, and you can\u2019t do that locked up in a lab. At some point, we need to put the model in a real-world situation with real data and real evaluations,\u201d LeBrun said.<\/p>\n

When the time comes, AMI Labs will turn to partners to explore deployments \u2014 and Nabla is the first disclosed partner expecting to access these early models, but definitely not the last. \u201cThis may explain the presence and strong interest of certain industrial players and potential partners in the investment round,\u201d LeBrun said.<\/p>\n

In addition to its lead investors and angels, AMI Labs is backed by NVIDIA, Samsung, Sea, Temasek and Toyota Ventures, as well as French players Association Familiale Mulliez, Groupe Industriel Marcel Dassault and Publicis Groupe. Agla\u00e9 Lab, Alpha Intelligence Capital, Art\u00e9mis, Bpifrance Digital Venture, New Legacy Ventures, SBVA and ZEBOX Ventures also participated.<\/p>\n

These investments may take a while to turn into commercial applications. But staying true to LeCun\u2019s beliefs, AMI Labs will publish papers as it goes. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe will also make a lot of code open source,\u201d said LeBrun, who had also worked at Meta\u2019s AI research laboratory, FAIR. While open research is \u201cincreasingly rare,\u201d this startup\u2019s founders still believe in it. \u201cWe think things move faster when they\u2019re open, and it\u2019s in our best interest to build a community and a research ecosystem around us.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AMI Labs, the new venture cofounded by Turing Prize winner Yann LeCun after he left Meta, has raised…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":530894,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,196858,254,255,64,63,105,146213,196856],"class_list":{"0":"post-530893","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-ami-labs","10":"tag-artificial-intelligence","11":"tag-artificialintelligence","12":"tag-au","13":"tag-australia","14":"tag-technology","15":"tag-world-models","16":"tag-yann-lecun"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=530893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530893\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/530894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=530893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=530893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=530893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}