Advanced Machine Intelligence
Funding History
| Seed · 03/2026 | $4.5B |
|---|
About
AMI Labs develops world models: AI systems trained on video, audio, and sensor data to learn the physical rules of the real world, an approach co-founder Yann LeCun has proposed as an alternative to large language models.
- founded
- 2025
- headquarters
- Paris, France
- sector
- Artificial Intelligence (World Models)
- totalFundingDisclosed
- $1.03B
- latestReportedValuation
- $4.50B (reported)
- latestRound
- Seed
Overview
Yann LeCun co-founded and led Meta's Fundamental AI Research (FAIR) lab and served as Meta's Chief AI Scientist before departing the company in November 2025. He founded Advanced Machine Intelligence (AMI) Labs in Paris on December 15, 2025, naming Alexandre LeBrun - previously CEO of the French healthcare AI startup Nabla - as AMI Labs' CEO while LeCun took the role of Executive Chairman. LeCun publicly confirmed the venture in a December 19, 2025 LinkedIn post after reports of the new company had already surfaced.
AMI Labs organizes its research around "world models" built on Joint Embedding Predictive Architecture (JEPA), an approach LeCun has championed as an alternative to large language models. Rather than predicting text token by token, JEPA-based systems are trained to learn abstract representations of physical dynamics from video, audio, and sensor data, with the stated goal of giving machines an intuitive model of the physical world comparable to how humans and animals learn. The company has said it is targeting applications where "reliability, controllability, and safety really matter," including robotics, industrial automation, wearable devices, and healthcare, and does not expect commercial products for roughly five years. AMI Labs is headquartered in Paris, with additional offices in New York, Montreal, and Singapore.
AMI Labs closed a $1.03 billion seed round in March 2026, co-led by Cathay Innovation, Greycroft, Hiro Capital, HV Capital, and Bezos Expeditions, with participation from NVIDIA, Samsung, Temasek, and dozens of additional institutional and individual investors. Cathay Innovation's own account of the round cited a $3.5 billion pre-money valuation; Crunchbase News separately reported the round valued the company at $4.5 billion, and Crunchbase counted AMI Labs among a record 37 companies added to its Unicorn Board that March. The round closed within roughly three months of the company's founding.
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