Yann LeCun leaves Meta after 12 years, becomes executive chairman of Advanced Machine Intelligence Labs seeking €500M

What happened

Yann LeCun, co-inventor of convolutional neural networks and long-time Chief AI Scientist at Meta, left the company after 12 years. He became executive chairman of Advanced Machine Intelligence Labs (AMI Labs), which is reportedly seeking ~€500M in funding at ~€3B valuation.

Context and impact

LeCun's departure is not entirely surprising — he has long publicly criticized Meta AI's direction and strongly disagrees that LLMs are the right path to general intelligence. In his exit, he called his successor 'inexperienced' and warned of further talent departures. AMI Labs will test his alternative research direction (non-LLM architectures).

Details

• LeCun at Meta for 12 years as Chief AI Scientist (since 2013)
• Technical disagreement: Meta bet too hard on LLMs, LeCun advocates a different approach
• Called successor Alexander Wang (age 28) inexperienced
• AMI Labs seeking ~€500M at ~€3B valuation
• Plans research outside the LLM paradigm
• Departure preceded further key talent exits from Meta AI