Yann LeCun Raises $1B in Europe's Largest-Ever Seed Round
Meta's former chief AI scientist just closed a $1.03B seed at a $3.5B valuation for his new world models startup.
Yann LeCun isn't thinking small. The former chief AI scientist at Meta just pulled in $1.03 billion in seed funding for his new venture, Advanced Machine Intelligence Labs. That's not a typo — billion, with a B, at the seed stage.
The round values the company at $3.5 billion pre-money, making it Europe's largest seed round ever by a wide margin.
The startup's focus: world models — AI systems designed to build internal representations of how the physical world works. It's a research direction LeCun has championed for years, arguing it's a more promising path to advanced AI than current large language model approaches.
A $1B seed is absurd by any historical standard. But when one of the most respected names in AI decides to go independent, the checkbooks apparently open fast.