Yann LeCun’s AMI Labs hits $3.5 billion pre-money valuation
Advanced Machine Intelligence Labs raised $1.03 billion in seed funding at a $3.5 billion pre-money valuation. The funding round was co-led by Cathay Innovation, Greycroft, Hiro Capital, HV Capital, and Bezos Expeditions, with backing from Jeff Bezos and Mark Cuban among other investors. The raise is one of the largest pre-revenue AI raises in history.
The funding positions AMI Labs as a high-profile bet on “world models” as an alternative to large language models. This valuation reflects a premium on elite AI researchers despite the company employing only about a dozen people and being less than three months old. The company aims to build systems capable of reasoning and planning in complex real-world settings.
Yann LeCun, the company’s founder and executive chairman, departed Meta Platforms at the end of 2025 after more than a decade leading its FAIR foundational AI research group. In a Reuters interview, LeCun said AMI aims to become a provider of intelligent systems across applications. “We want to become the main provider of intelligent systems, regardless of what the application is,” LeCun said.
Near-term target industries include manufacturers, automakers, aerospace companies, and pharmaceutical groups. LeCun stated these industries require understanding physics and causality more than generating text. LeCun revealed talks with Meta about deploying AMI’s technology in its Ray-Ban smart glasses, describing it as a shorter-term potential application.
Alexandre LeBrun, co-founder of French health-tech startup Nabla, serves as CEO. LeCun holds the role of executive chairman. Through a partnership with Nabla, AMI Labs plans to develop FDA-certifiable AI systems for healthcare.
NVIDIA has been investing heavily in AI startups, pouring roughly $53 billion across 170 deals according to PitchBook data cited by Forbes. World Labs, founded by AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li, is reportedly in talks to raise funding at a $5 billion valuation after launching Marble, a product that generates physically accurate 3D environments.
LeCun acknowledged commercial products may take years to materialize. The company initially operates like a research lab exploring untested concepts. Consumer applications could eventually include domestic robots that need common sense to understand the physical world.