Although artificial intelligence systems built on large-scale language models have advanced rapidly, many researchers believe they still struggle with real-world reasoning and decision-making. An emerging startup founded by one of the most influential figures in the AI field is betting on a different path.
Advanced Machine Intelligence (AMI), a startup founded by former Meta chief AI scientist Yann LeCun, has raised $1.03 billion in funding at a pre-money valuation of $3.5 billion, according to a report. Reuters representativeOrtho.
The round was co-led by Cathay Innovation, Greycroft, Hiro Capital, HV Capital, and Bezos Expeditions.
The investment marks one of the largest funding rounds for a new AI research company this year.
This new capital will support research and development and efforts to turn technology into deployable systems for industries that rely on reliable AI decision-making.
Challenging current AI model approaches
AMI was founded by Yann LeCun, who previously served as chief AI scientist at Meta and helped found Facebook AI Research (FAIR). He left the company at the end of 2025.
The startup is built on LeCun’s long-held view that today’s large-scale language models (LLMs) alone cannot achieve human-level intelligence.
LeCun told Reuters that current systems that predict the next word or pixel have limited ability to understand the real world.
“Our main goal is to build intelligent systems that understand the real world,” LeCun told Reuters.
AMI is working on another architecture called “world models” that aims to allow AI systems to build abstract representations of real-world data and predict how the environment will evolve.
The idea is that these systems will be able to reason about actions and plan tasks more reliably than current generative AI approaches.
AMI will initially focus on organizations managing complex physical systems, rather than targeting consumer chatbots.
These include manufacturers, automakers, aerospace companies, biomedical companies, and pharmaceutical companies.
According to Reuters, the company wants to develop AI tools that can perform reasoning and planning in complex environments where safety, reliability and control are important.
AMI believes such systems could be useful in industrial automation, robotics, wearable devices, healthcare technology, and other fields that rely on sensor-based data.
