AMI Labs, the new venture founded by Turing Prize winner Yann LeCun after leaving Meta, has raised $1.03 billion at a $3.5 billion pre-funding valuation. AMI works on models of the world, or AI that learns from reality, not just language.
This category has fewer players than generative AI, but probably not for long. “My prediction is that ‘global models’ will be the next buzzword,” AMI Labs CEO Alexandre LeBrun told TechCrunch. “In six months, every company will call itself a global model for raising funds.”
LeBrun said this with a smile because he thinks AMI Labs is very different: its purpose is to understand the real world. This may have applications in healthcare, where AMI Labs’ first partner will be Nabla, the digital health startup of which he is now chairman.
As CEO of Nabla, LeBrun had reached the same conclusion as LeCun about the limitations of large-scale linguistic models (LLMs) where hallucinations can have life-threatening consequences. But you also know that it will take a while for the start to provide a viable alternative based on JEPA, the Joint Embedding Predictive Architecture proposed by LeCun in 2022.
“AMI Labs is a very ambitious project, because it starts with basic research. It’s not your typical AI startup that can launch a product in three months, have revenue in six months and make $10 million [annual recurring revenue] in 12 months,” said LeBrun.” Conversely, it may take years for global models to move from theory to business.
Outside of this period, companies that develop world models have attracted large checks. SpaItial raised a cycle of 13 million seeds – unusually large for early Europe; while Fei-Fei Li’s World Labs raised $1 billion last month alone. Now, AMI Labs is joining the club with more funding than originally announced.
The French AI lab was reportedly seeking 500 million euros last December, but ended up raising 890 million euros, likely thanks to its team. In addition to LeCun’s involvement as chairman and LeBrun’s track record as an entrepreneur, it also boasts Meta’s European VP Laurent Solly as COO, and top researchers Saining Xie as chief scientific officer, Pascale Fung as chief research & innovation officer and Michael Rabbat as VP of global models.
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According to LeBrun, the high interest rate gave the startup an opportunity to choose investors, both in terms of alignment of expectations and background. The round was co-led by Cathay Innovation, Greycroft, Hiro Capital, HV Capital and Bezos Expeditions, with participation from several other funds and industry-connected backers, as well as individuals including Tim and Rosemary Berners-Lee, Jim Breyer, Mark Cuban, Mark Leslie, Xavier Niel and Eric Schmidt.
Without adding value, this funding will give AMI Labs a logical runway to bank on its two main cost centers: computing and talent. LeBrun said he will prioritize quality over quantity to build the AMI Labs team in four key locations: Paris, where it is headquartered; New York, where LeCun teaches at NYU; Montreal, where its Rabbat is based; and Singapore, both to recruit AI talent and to be closer to future customers in Asia.
Although AMI Labs has no plans to generate revenue at this time, it plans to engage with potential customers early on. “We develop global models that want to understand the world, and you can’t do that locked in a lab. At some point, we need to put the model in a real-world situation with real data and real experiments,” said LeBrun.
When the time comes, AMI Labs will turn to partners to test shipments – and Nabla is the first revealed partner expecting access to these early models, but certainly not the last. “This may explain the presence and strong interest of certain industry players and potential partners in the investment round,” said LeBrun.
In addition to its leading investors and angels, AMI Labs is supported by NVIDIA, Samsung, Sea, Temasek and Toyota Ventures, as well as French players Association Familiale Mulliez, Groupe Industriel Marcel Dassault and Publicis Groupe. Aglaé Lab, Alpha Intelligence Capital, Artémis, Bpifrance Digital Venture, New Legacy Ventures, SBVA and ZEBOX Ventures also participated.
These investments may take time to turn into commercial applications. But staying true to LeCun’s beliefs, AMI Labs will publish papers as they go.
“We’re also going to open source the code,” said LeBrun, who previously worked at Meta’s AI research laboratory, FAIR. Although open research is “rare,” the founders of this startup still believe in it. “We think things move faster when they’re open, and it’s in our best interest to build a community and a research ecosystem around us.”
