Advanced Machine Intelligence Labs announced it raised $1.03 billion in seed funding at a $3.5 billion pre-money valuation. The funding round was co-led by Cathay Innovation, Greycroft, Hiro Capital, HV Capital, and Bezos Expeditions. Backing came from Jeff Bezos and Mark Cuban among other investors.
The raise is one of the largest pre-revenue AI investments in history. It positions the startup as a high-profile bet on “world models” as an alternative to large language models. The company employs about a dozen people and is less than three months old.
Yann LeCun, the company’s founder and executive chairman, departed Meta Platforms at the end of 2025. He led Meta’s foundational AI research group FAIR for more than a decade. LeCun stated AMI aims to build systems capable of reasoning and planning in complex real-world settings.
“We want to become the main provider of intelligent systems, regardless of what the application is,” LeCun said. The company’s near-term targets include manufacturers, automakers, aerospace companies, and pharmaceutical groups. These industries require understanding physics and causality more than generating text.
LeCun revealed he is in talks with Meta about deploying AMI’s technology in its Ray-Ban smart glasses. He called this a shorter-term potential application. The company plans to develop domestic robots that need common sense to understand the physical world.
Alexandre LeBrun serves as chief executive officer. LeCun holds the role of executive chairman. Through a partnership with Nabla, AMI Labs plans to develop FDA-certifiable AI systems for healthcare.
World Labs, founded by Fei-Fei Li, is reportedly in talks to raise funding at a $5 billion valuation. NVIDIA has invested roughly $53 billion across 170 AI startup deals, according to PitchBook data cited by Forbes. LeCun acknowledged commercial products may take years to materialize.
