3 Minutes
After 12 years at Meta, Yann LeCun has confirmed he will leave the company to found an independent startup focused on Advanced Machine Intelligence (AMI). Known as one of the pioneers of modern AI, LeCun says he wants a freer environment to pursue systems that truly understand and reason about the physical world.
Why LeCun is betting against the LLM trend
LeCun has long been skeptical of the current industry obsession with scaling large language models. Rather than predicting the next word, he favors what he calls world models: AI that simulates and reasons about real-world events, grasps physics and causality, stores persistent memories, and plans complex sequences of actions. In his view, simply making language models bigger will not deliver human-level intelligence.
From FAIR labs to an independent lab for AMI
During his time at Meta and at New York University, LeCun explored these ideas inside FAIR and academic research settings. Now he wants to mature AMI concepts in an independent startup where radical approaches can scale without being constrained by the corporate structures of big tech. Imagine agents that learn durable facts about the world, can plan multi-step tasks, and interact with physical environments—this is the outcome he is aiming for.
Not a clean break: a new kind of partnership
LeCun will remain at Meta through the end of the year and transition to an external partner role after that. Meta has already said it will collaborate with his startup and have access to its innovations, a relationship similar to those between Microsoft and OpenAI or Google and Anthropic. That means his departure is less of a severed tie and more of a strategic spin-off, one that could let both sides move faster.
What AMI could change about AI and the economy
LeCun frames AMI as the next major revolution in artificial intelligence. If successful, these systems could shift how industries automate tasks that require physical reasoning, long-term planning, and robust memory. The idea is not incremental improvement but a different architectural goal: build models that understand the laws of the physical world rather than only modeling textual patterns.
There are still big technical hurdles. World models need richer training signals, better integration with sensors and simulators, and architectures that combine perception, memory, and planning. But with Meta's backing as a partner and LeCun's reputation, the new startup will likely attract top researchers and capital.
Why this matters to the AI landscape
LeCun leaving Meta highlights an emerging pattern in AI: senior researchers setting up independent ventures to pursue alternative approaches, while maintaining collaboration with tech giants. That hybrid model can accelerate progress by marrying the creativity of small teams with the resources of large firms. For observers of AI, it is an experiment worth watching—will AMI outperform the LLM-first path or simply complement it?
Whether you follow developments for their technical promise or their economic impact, Yann LeCun's move underscores a growing debate in AI research: scale existing language models, or rethink the foundation of intelligence itself.
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