At 65, with his bright blue eyes framed by his signature Ray-Ban Wayfarer glasses, Yann Le Cun, a leading figure in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), is determined to open a new chapter in his life. After laying the foundations of modern AI as a researcher, which earned him the prestigious 2018 Turing Award alongside colleagues Yoshua Bengio and Geoffrey Hinton, and leading AI research at Meta for over 12 years, the French scientist is launching his own start-up, called AMI, for Advanced Machine Intelligence. He envisions it as a “global company.”

Le Cun is keeping the details of his fundraising (estimated at €500 million) and the makeup of his team under wraps until formal announcements, expected in February. For now, it is known that the company’s headquarters will be in Paris and that Le Cun has already recruited Laurent Solly, the former director of Meta France, as well as Alex LeBrun, founder of the health-focused AI start-up Nabla. The entrepreneur, who also resides part-time in New York, hopes AMI will help usher in a new era for AI. “After deep learning 12 years ago, and the rise of chatbots like ChatGPT or Gemini three years ago, we are about to see a third revolution: AI systems that can understand the real, physical world,” he said at a meeting with journalists in Paris on Thursday, January 15, promising industrial and robotics applications. Le Cun made no secret that his departure from Meta was tied to strategic disagreements and stood by his critiques of the “authoritarian drift” of US President Donald Trump and of those who support him, such as Elon Musk.

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