Yann LeCun’s new venture, AMI Labs, has received intense attention since the AI scientist left Meta to form it. This week, the startup finally revealed what it’s building. And some important details are hidden in plain sight.
On its newly launched website, the company revealed 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, and now it has officially joined the ranks of the hottest AI research startups.
Building foundational models that bridge AI and the real world has become one of the most exciting endeavors in the field, attracting top scientists and deep-pocketed investors alike, with or without a product.
World Labs is a direct competitor, founded by AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li, who quickly emerged from stealth to become a unicorn. World Labs is reportedly in talks to raise new funding at a $5 billion valuation after announcing its first product, Marble, which generates physically sound 3D worlds.
There is little doubt that venture capitalists are similarly keen to invest in LeCun, lending credence to rumors that AMI Labs may raise money at a valuation of $3.5 billion. According to Bloomberg, VCs in talks with the startup include Cathay Innovation, Greycroft and Hiro Capital, where LeCun is an advisor. Other potential investors reportedly include 20VC, Bpifrance, Daphni, and HV Capital.
Regardless of who draws the check, investors may need to be aware of important details. As Mr. LeCun made clear, he is AMI’s executive chairman, not its CEO. Instead, that role belongs to Alex LeBrun, who was co-founder and CEO of Nabla, a health AI startup with offices in Paris and New York.
LeBlanc’s transition from Nabla to AMI is part of a partnership announced last December by Nabla, which develops AI assistants for clinical care and of which LeCun serves as an advisor. In exchange for “privileged access” to AMI’s world model, Nabla’s board supported LeBrun’s transition from CEO to lead AI scientist and chairman, paving the way for his new role.
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As CEO of AMI Labs, LeBrun will be surrounded by familiar faces. The serial entrepreneur and AI engineer worked under LeCun’s leadership at Meta’s AI research institute, FAIR, after Facebook acquired his previous startup, Wit.ai. According to reports, the duo will also include Laurent Solly, who resigned as Meta’s European vice president in December last year.
The overlap in talent between AMI and the meta probably won’t stop there. LeCun told MIT Technology Review that his former employer could be AMI’s first customer. However, he has also publicly criticized some of Meta’s strategic choices made under the direction of Mark Zuckerberg. More broadly, this review interprets AMI Labs as a contrarian bet on large-scale language models (LLMs).
The limitations of LLM that LeCun pointed out include hallucinations, which, as LeBrun knows firsthand, is a serious concern in fields such as medicine. The CEO of AMI Labs told Forbes that a big reason he took on the role was the prospect of applying AMI’s global model to healthcare. But the startup also plans to target other high-stakes applications.
“AMI Labs will advance AI research to develop applications where reliability, control, and safety are truly critical, especially in industrial process control, automation, wearable devices, robotics, and healthcare,” the company said in its mission statement. “We share one belief: true intelligence does not begin with language; it begins with the world.”
Unlike generative approaches, which LeCun and his team believe are less 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 company plans to license its technology to industry partners for real-world applications, but also plans to help shape the future of AI “with the global academic research community through open publications and open source.” LeCun said he plans to maintain his professorship at New York University, teaching one class a year and supervising doctoral and postdoctoral students.
This means the French-born researcher will remain based in New York, but AMI Labs “will be a global company headquartered in Paris,” he told MIT Technology Review. French President Emmanuel Macron welcomed the news and expressed his pride that LeCun, also a Turing Award winner, had chosen 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 the decision to choose Paris as its headquarters will help solidify Paris’ reputation as an AI hub, where it will join the ranks of several international institutes including H, Mistral AI, and FAIR. Perhaps it’s appropriate, LeCun pointed out, that AMI is pronounced amee, as in the French word ami, which means “friend.”
