Former Meta AI Chief Yann LeCun Raises $1.03B for 12-Employee Startup AMI Labs

Former chief AI scientist at Meta, Yann LeCun, who was a co-winner of the 2018 Turing Prize (the de facto Nobel Prize of computing), announced Tuesday that his startup Advanced Machine Intelligence, known as AMI Labs, has raised $1.03 billion at a $3.5 billion pre-money valuation. On X, LeCun wrote, "We just completed our seed round: $1.03B / €890M, one of the largest seeds ever, probably the largest for a European company. We're hiring!"

The round was co-led by Cathay Innovation, Greycroft, Hiro Capital, HV Capital, and Bezos Expeditions. Corporate backers include NVIDIA, Samsung, Sea, Temasek, and Toyota Ventures. Individual investors include Tim and Rosemary Berners-Lee, Jim Breyer, Mark Cuban, Xavier Niel, and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

LeCun founded Facebook AI Research at Meta in 2013, a lab later renamed FAIR. He left Meta at the end of 2025. In June 2025, Meta reorganised its AI division under a new unit called Meta Superintelligence Labs, led by former Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang.