- AMI Labs raises $1.03 billion at a $3.5 billion pre-money valuation to develop world models based on JEPA architecture.
- Turing Prize winner Yann LeCun cofounded the lab after leaving Meta and serves as chairman.
- CEO Alexandre LeBrun, former head of Nabla, leads operations across Paris, New York, Montreal, and Singapore.
- The round was co-led by Cathay Innovation, Greycroft, Hiro Capital, HV Capital, and Bezos Expeditions, with backing from NVIDIA, Samsung, and Toyota Ventures.
- AMI Labs will publish research openly and release significant portions of its code as open source.
$1.03 Billion to Understand the Real World
AMI Labs, the French AI startup cofounded by Turing Prize winner Yann LeCun after his departure from Meta, has raised $1.03 billion at a $3.5 billion pre-money valuation. The company is building world models — AI systems that learn from physical reality rather than text — based on LeCun’s Joint Embedding Predictive Architecture (JEPA), first proposed in 2022. The round was co-led by Cathay Innovation, Greycroft, Hiro Capital, HV Capital, and Bezos Expeditions.
The startup had reportedly been seeking just €500 million last December but ended up raising nearly double, likely thanks to its roster. Beyond LeCun as chairman, the leadership includes Meta’s former VP for Europe Laurent Solly as COO, Saining Xie as chief science officer, Pascale Fung as chief research & innovation officer, and Michael Rabbat as VP of world models. High-profile angel investors include Tim and Rosemary Berners-Lee, Jim Breyer, Mark Cuban, and Eric Schmidt.
World Models Are the New Buzzword — and AMI Labs Knows It
“My prediction is that ‘world models’ will be the next buzzword,” CEO Alexandre LeBrun told TechCrunch. “In six months, every company will call itself a world model to raise funding.” He said it with a smile, but AMI Labs is betting its approach is fundamentally different from generative AI. LeBrun, formerly CEO of digital health startup Nabla, had reached the same conclusion as LeCun: large language models hallucinate, and in healthcare, hallucinations can kill.
AMI Labs is not a typical applied AI startup. LeBrun warned there will be no product in three months, no revenue in six, and no $10 million in annual recurring revenue in twelve. World models are still fundamental research. But the category is attracting serious capital regardless — Fei-Fei Li’s World Labs secured $1 billion last month, and SpAItial raised a $13 million seed round in Europe. The funding will bankroll compute and talent across four hubs: Paris (HQ), New York, Montreal, and Singapore. Nabla is AMI Labs’ first disclosed deployment partner, but strategic backers including NVIDIA, Samsung, Sea, Temasek, and Toyota Ventures suggest the pipeline extends far beyond healthcare.
