French artificial intelligence startup AMI — co-founded by Meta’s former chief AI scientist Yann Lecun — announced on Tuesday that it has raised $1 billion to develop models capable of understanding the physical world.
This first funding round for AMI – which stands for Advanced Machine Intelligence – was led by five investment funds and attracted investment from several large groups, including Toyota, Nvidia and Samsung.
Notable names in tech have also bought, among them former Google CEO Eric Smith and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
AMI was valued at about $3.5 billion before this funding round.
LeCun announced his departure from Meta in November after 12 years with the company that owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
Alexandre Lebrun is CEO of the Paris-based startup while he now serves as AMI’s non-executive chairman.
LeCun told AFP that, with the funding round complete, AMI would now proceed with adding “between 20 and 30” recruits “over a short period of time”.
Along with AMI’s five other co-founders, he said he plans to “shift into high gear” in developing “world models” — AI systems designed to understand the physical world.
He added that AI aims to understand the world “the way animals and humans do” – unlike the larger linguistic models (LLMs) behind chatbots such as ChatGPT and Gemini.
In three to five years, AMI plans to produce “sufficiently universal intelligent systems” that can be used for any task that requires intelligent machines, such as autonomous driving and robotics.
“I’m clearly in the camp that believes we need a paradigm shift” from AI reliance on LLMs, LeCun told AFP.
The French-American scientist, who continues as a computer science professor at New York University, said AMI will focus on research and development in its first year.
Discussions with corporate partners could be held within six to 12 months, he said.
(With FRANCE 24 AFP)
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