Yann LeCun’s AMI Labs raises largest-ever seed round
Yann LeCun’s, much anticipated startup, Advanced Machine Intelligence (AMI Labs), has raised a $1.03 billion seed round at a $3.5 billion pre-money valuation, making the raise Europe’s largest-ever seed round. The startup is working on ‘world models’, AI that learns from reality, not just language.
The funding round was co-led by Cathay Innovation, Greycroft, Hiro Capital, HV Capital, and Bezos Expeditions. The startup is also supported by a group of long-term global investors and strategic backers, including Toyota Ventures, New Legacy Ventures, Temasek, SBVA, NVIDIA, Mark Cuban, Association Familiale Mulliez, Groupe industriel Marcel Dassault, Sea, and Alpha Intelligence Capital.
Paris-based AMI Labs aims to enable “the next AI revolution, by building a new breed of AI systems,” according to its website. AMI is developing world models that learn abstract representations of real-world sensor data, ignoring unpredictable details, and that make predictions in representation space. In an interview with Reuters, LeCun explained that “current AI approaches based on predicting the next word or pixel will not produce broadly capable intelligent agents by themselves.”
The company’s target customers are organisations operating complex systems, such as manufacturers, automakers, aerospace companies, and biomedical firms. Although, over time, the technology could be used to support consumer applications.
The former Meta Platforms chief AI scientist announced the startup whilst Meta has been furthering its push into LLM development. LeCun joined Meta in 2013 to fund Facebook AI Research, becoming one of the company’s most prominent AI leaders, before departing in November 2025.
For more startup news, check out the other articles on the website, and subscribe to the magazine for free. Listen to The Cereal Entrepreneur podcast for more interviews with entrepreneurs and big-hitters in the startup ecosystem.
