LeCun-backed AMI Labs confirms world model focus, targets safety-critical industries

Yann LeCun’s new venture AMI Labs has stopped the speculation and confirmed its technical direction: building AI “world models” designed to understand and act in the physical world, not just generate text.

AMI Labs bets on world models over LLM-first systems

AMI Labs’ newly launched site positions the company around world models—systems that learn how the world works from sensor data, video, and interaction signals, then use that internal representation to plan and predict outcomes. The positioning is also a clear philosophical contrast with LLM-centric approaches, which LeCun has criticized for issues like hallucinations—an acute risk in regulated and high-stakes settings.

The company says it will prioritize reliability, controllability, and safety, with initial application areas spanning industrial process control, automation, wearables, robotics, and healthcare. That emphasis matters for operators who need repeatable outputs, auditability, and bounded behavior—requirements that don’t map cleanly onto open-ended generative systems.

Leadership, funding signals, and enterprise go-to-market

LeCun is executive chairman, while CEO duties sit with Alex LeBrun, formerly co-founder and CEO of Nabla. Nabla previously disclosed an “exclusive partnership” where it gets privileged access to AMI’s models as LeBrun transitions to chief AI scientist and chairman at Nabla, according to the company’s release (https://www.nabla.com/press-release/nabla-announces-exclusive-partnership-with-advanced-machine-intelligence-to-pioneer-the-next-era-of-agentic-healthcare-ai).

On the capital side, Bloomberg reported AMI Labs investor discussions at a 3.5 billion dollars valuation, naming Cathay Innovation, Greycroft, and Hiro Capital among firms in talks (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-19/yann-lecun-s-ami-labs-draws-investor-interest-from-cathay-hiro). Separately, Bloomberg said rival World Labs—founded by Fei-Fei Li—was in funding talks at a 5 billion dollars valuation (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-23/fei-fei-li-s-ai-startup-world-labs-in-funding-talks-at-5-billion-valuation), underscoring how aggressively markets are pricing the “world model” thesis.

AMI Labs plans to license technology to industry partners, while also publishing research and open-sourcing some work. LeCun told MIT Technology Review the company could even count Meta as an early customer (https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/01/22/1131661/yann-lecuns-new-venture-ami-labs/), suggesting an enterprise-first path rather than a consumer app launch.