Yann LeCun’s new venture, AMI Labs, has attracted intense attention since the AI researcher left Meta to found it. This week, the startup finally confirmed what it’s building — and several key details have been hiding in plain sight.
On its newly launched website, the startup revealed its plans to develop “world models” to “build intelligent systems that understand the real world.” The focus on world models was already hinted at by AMI’s name, which stands for Advanced Machine Intelligence, but it has now officially joined the ranks of the hottest AI research startups.
Building fundamental models that bridge AI and the real world has become one of the field’s most exciting pursuits, attracting both top scientists and deep-pocketed investors — product or no product.
World Labs, a direct rival founded by AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li, became a unicorn shortly after emerging from stealth. After launching its first product, Marble, which generates physically sound 3D worlds, World Labs is now reportedly in talks to raise $5 billion worth of new funding.
There’s little doubt that VCs would be just as eager to invest in LeCun, adding credence to rumors that AMI Labs may be raising funding at a $3.5 billion valuation. According to Bloomberg, VCs in talks with the startup include Cathay Innovation, Greycroft and Hiro Capital, to which LeCun is an adviser. Other potential investors reportedly include 20VC, Bpifrance, Daphni and HV Capital.
Regardless of who writes the checks, investors may want to note one important detail: As LeCun has made clear, he is AMI’s executive chairman, not its CEO. Instead, that role belongs to Alex LeBrun, former co-founder and CEO of Nabla, a healthcare AI startup with offices in Paris and New York.
LeBrun’s move from Nabla to AMI is part of a partnership announced last December by Nabla, which develops AI assistants for clinical care, and for which LeCun has been an adviser. In exchange for “privileged access” to AMI’s world models, Nabla’s board supported LeBrun’s move from CEO to chief AI researcher and chairman, paving the way for his new role.
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As AMI Labs’ CEO, LeBrun will be surrounded by familiar faces. After Facebook acquired his former startup, Wit.ai, the serial entrepreneur and AI engineer worked under LeCun’s leadership at Meta’s AI research lab, FAIR. According to reports, the duo will also be joined by Laurent Solly, who stepped down as Meta’s vice president for Europe last December.
The talent overlap between AMI and Meta probably doesn’t stop there. LeCun told MIT Technology Review that his former employer could very well be AMI’s first client. But he has also been publicly critical of some of Meta’s strategic choices made under Mark Zuckerberg’s leadership. More broadly, the review interprets AMI Labs as an adversarial effort against large language models (LLMs).
The limitations of LLMs that LeCun has pointed out include hallucinations, which are a serious problem in contexts such as medicine, as LeBrun knows firsthand. AMI Labs’ CEO told Forbes that a big reason he took the role was the prospect of applying its global models to healthcare. But the startup will also target other high-stakes applied fields.
“AMI Labs will advance AI research and develop applications where reliability, controllability and safety really matter, especially for industrial process control, automation, wearables, robotics, healthcare and more,” it wrote in its mission statement. “We share one belief: true intelligence doesn’t start in language. It starts in the world.”
Unlike generative approaches, which LeCun and his team see as ill-suited to unpredictable data such as sensor input, the startup promises that its AI systems will not only understand the real world, but also have persistent memory, the ability to reason and plan, and be controllable and secure.
The startup plans to license its technology to industry partners for real-world applications, but says it also plans to help build the future of AI “with the global academic research community via open publications and open source.” LeCun said he plans to keep his professorship at NYU, where he teaches one class a year and supervises doctoral and postdoctoral students.
That means the French-born researcher will remain based in New York, but he told MIT Technology Review that AMI Labs “will become a global company [that’s] with headquarters in Paris.” The news was welcomed by French President Emmanuel Macron, who expressed his pride that LeCun, who is also a Turing Prize winner, chose Paris. “We will do everything we can to ensure his success from France,” he said.
The startup will also have offices in Montreal, New York and Singapore, but its decision to choose Paris for its headquarters will help consolidate Paris’ reputation as an AI hub, where it will join the ranks of H, Mistral AI and several international laboratories, including FAIR. It’s perhaps fitting that AMI is pronounced a-mee — like “ami” in French, which means “friend,” LeCun pointed out.