Yann LeCun, former Chief AI Scientist at Meta, is taking a very different approach in the AI race. His startup AMI Labs has raised $1.03 billion in seed funding and is already valued at $3.5 billion. Instead of relying on traditional large language models, the company wants to build so-called “world models” — AI systems designed to understand the physical world rather than simply predict the next word.
LeCun argues that today’s large language models alone won’t lead to human-level intelligence. AMI plans to train AI using real-world sensor and video data for applications in robotics, healthcare, and industrial systems. In doing so, the company is challenging Silicon Valley’s current obsession with scaling chatbots.