Ex-Meta AI chief Yann LeCun's AMI raises $1.03 billion for alternative AI approach

Financing positions tests LeCun's belief that today's large language models fall ​short of human-level reasoning

Advanced Machine Intelligence, the startup founded by former Meta Platforms chief AI scientist Yann LeCun, said on Tuesday ​it raised $1.03 billion based on a $3.50 billion pre-money valuation, as it ‌seeks to commercialise artificial intelligence systems built around reasoning, planning and "world models."

The financing positions the company as a test of LeCun's belief that today's large language models fall ​short of human-level reasoning and autonomy.

Advanced Machine Intelligence (AMI) is building a new breed of AI systems that understand the world, have persistent memory, can reason and plan, and are controllable and safe.

We’ve raised a $1.03B (~€890M) round from global investors who believe in our vision of universally… pic.twitter.com/Yc37J4FqPz

— AMI Labs (@amilabs) March 10, 2026

The funding round was co-led by ​Cathay Innovation, Greycroft, Hiro Capital, HV Capital and Bezos Expeditions.

Meanwhile, ⁠Meta (META.O), opens new tab has been intensifying its push into LLM development. In June 2025, ​the company reorganised its AI efforts under a division called Meta Superintelligence Labs led ​by former Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang.

LeCun joined Meta in 2013 to found Facebook AI Research, later known as FAIR, and became one of the company's most prominent AI ​leaders before departing at the end of 2025.

In an interview with Reuters, LeCun ​said AMI aims to build systems capable of reasoning and planning in complex real-world settings. ‌He ⁠added that current AI approaches based on predicting the next word or pixel will not produce broadly capable intelligent agents by themselves.

The company's near-term target customers are organisations operating complex systems, including manufacturers, automakers, aerospace companies, biomedical firms ​and pharmaceutical groups. "We ​want to become ⁠the main provider of intelligent systems, regardless of what the application is," LeCun said.

Over time, he added, the technology ​could also support consumer applications. "What consumers could be interacting ​with is ⁠a domestic robot. You need a domestic robot to have some level of common sense to really understand the physical world."

LeCun said he was also talking ⁠with Meta ​about potentially deploying the technology in its ​Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. "That's probably one of the shorter-term potential applications," he said.