Advanced Machine Intelligence, the startup launched by former Meta Platforms chief AI scientist Yann LeCun, announced Tuesday that it has raised $1.03 billion at a pre-money valuation of $3.50 billion. The capital raise aims to back AMI’s effort to develop and commercialize AI systems built around reasoning, planning and so-called "world models."
The financing round was co-led by Cathay Innovation, Greycroft, Hiro Capital, HV Capital and Bezos Expeditions. The size and valuation of the round frame AMI as an important test of LeCun’s contention that current large language models - which primarily rely on next-word or next-pixel prediction - are not sufficient on their own to produce broadly capable, autonomous intelligent agents.
LeCun, who joined Meta in 2013 to found Facebook AI Research (later FAIR) and rose to prominence as one of the company’s leading AI figures before leaving at the end of 2025, told Reuters that AMI’s technical objective is to create systems that can reason and plan in complex, real-world environments. He argued that prediction-based approaches will not, by themselves, yield the kind of general-purpose intelligence he envisions.
"We want to become the main provider of intelligent systems, regardless of what the application is," LeCun said, describing AMI’s initial commercial focus on organizations that operate complicated, safety- and reliability-critical systems. He identified near-term target customers as manufacturers, automakers, aerospace firms, biomedical companies and pharmaceutical groups.
LeCun also noted the potential for the technology to extend into consumer use cases over time. He described a domestic robot as a representative consumer endpoint that would require a degree of common sense to understand the physical world and interact safely and effectively in home settings.
On possible near-term integrations, LeCun said he has been in discussions with Meta about using AMI’s technology in the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, calling that "probably one of the shorter term potential applications."
The announcement arrives as Meta itself continues to accelerate its large language model work. In June 2025, Meta reorganized its AI efforts under a new division called Meta Superintelligence Labs, led by former Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang. AMI’s funding and stated approach underscore a competing vision for how to achieve more autonomous, reasoning-capable AI systems.
While AMI’s backers and valuation reflect strong investor interest in alternative AI architectures, the company’s immediate commercial ambitions are concentrated on industrial and biomedical customers that run complex systems. Over a longer horizon, AMI’s leadership has suggested consumer-facing applications - such as domestic robots - could be supported if the technology matures as planned.