Yann LeCun’s AI start-up AMI raises $1.03bn in seed funding

https://www.siliconrepublic.com/start-ups/yann-lecun-ai-start-up-ami-raises-seed-funding-world-model

Publish Date: 2026-03-10 09:20:00

The seed funding round values the start-up at $3.5bn, despite having only been established this year.

Advanced Machine Intelligence (AMI), which is an artificial intelligence (AI) start-up founded by former Meta AI chief Yann LeCun, has raised $1.03bn in seed funding. The round was co-led by Cathay Innovation, Greycroft, Hiro Capital, HV Capital and Bezos Expeditions.

AMI was also supported by long-term global investors and strategic backers such as Toyota Ventures, New Legacy Ventures, Temasek, SBVA, Nvidia, Mark Cuban, Association Familiale Mulliez, Groupe industriel Marcel Dassault, Sea, and Alpha Intelligence Capital. Samsung and Bpifrance Digital Venture were also among the significant participants.

The funds raised are being used to develop AMI and according to the organisation, the building of a new “breed of AI systems that understand the world, have persistent memory, can reason and plan, and are controllable and safe”.

Established earlier this year and based in Paris, AMI explained that the company is developing ‘world models’ that learn abstract representations of real-world sensor data – “ignoring unpredictable details” – and make predictions in representation space. According to AMI, world models allow agentic systems to predict the consequences of their actions and plan action sequences that accomplish tasks “subject to safety guardrails”.

Despite being a young start-up, AMI has already reached a valuation of $3.5bn after the seed round. It is the most recent company to receive funding for its focus on ‘world models’.

In February, World Labs, founded by the ‘godmother of AI’ Fei-Fei Li, raised $1bn to advance its own world model AI technology. The funding round was estimated in prior reports to potentially value the start-up at $5bn.

World Labs describes itself as a “spatial intelligence company, building frontier models that can perceive, generate, reason and interact with…

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