'AI Godfather' Yann LeCun's AMI Labs Secures $1 Billion Investment

AMI Labs (Advanced Machine Intelligence Labs), a startup founded by the so-called 'AI Godfather' Yann LeCun, has raised $1 billion (approximately 1.5 trillion won) in investment.

'AI godfather' Yann LeCun, Chairman of the Board at AMI Labs. Photo by Reuters Yonhap News

On March 10 (local time), AMI Labs announced that it had secured $1.03 billion in funding to commercialize artificial intelligence (AI) systems based on reasoning, planning, and 'world models.' A world model refers to AI that learns the rules of its surroundings and the physical world, enabling it to predict situations and plan actions.

Prior to this investment, AMI Labs' valuation stood at $3.5 billion. According to the Financial Times (FT), investors include French venture capital firm Cathay Innovation, Bezos Expeditions—an investment firm led by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Singapore's sovereign wealth fund Temasek, South Korea’s SBVA, and U.S. semiconductor company Nvidia. Bloomberg News reported that Samsung Electronics also participated in the investment.

According to market research firm Dealroom, the amount raised in this round is the second largest, following the $2 billion secured last year by the U.S. startup Thinking Machines Lab.

AMI Labs will launch with offices in Paris, New York, Singapore, and Montreal. The company will be led by Alexandre Lebrun, former CEO of the French startup Nabla. LeCun will serve as Chairman of the Board. Laurent Solly, former Vice President for Europe at Meta, will join as Chief Operating Officer (COO).

The FT noted that this record-breaking investment demonstrates heightened investor interest in new AI approaches beyond the current large language models (LLMs). Yann LeCun, who won the Turing Award—often called the Nobel Prize of computer science—argues that systems trained mainly on text are unlikely to achieve human-level reasoning. He is developing a 'world model' that understands the physical environment, which can be applied in robotics and transportation sectors.

AMI Labs' short-term target customers are companies operating complex systems in fields such as manufacturing, automotive, aerospace, biotechnology, and pharmaceuticals. LeCun stated, "Our aim is to become a major supplier of intelligent systems, regardless of the application area."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.