AMI Labs Raises $1.03B Seed to Build World Models for Autonomous Agents
AMI Labs, co-founded by Turing Award winner Yann LeCun after leaving Meta, has raised $1.03 billion in seed funding at a $3.5 billion pre-money valuation — the largest seed round in European startup history. The Paris-based company is building world models based on LeCun's Joint Embedding Predictive Architecture (JEPA).
Unlike large language models that learn from text, world models learn from reality — understanding basic principles of how the physical world works through real-world data. This makes them the foundation for autonomous agents that operate in the physical world: drones, robotaxis, industrial robots, and healthcare systems where the limitations of language-only AI are most consequential.
The round was co-led by Cathay Innovation, Greycroft, Hiro Capital, HV Capital, and Bezos Expeditions, with participation from Tim Berners-Lee, Jim Breyer, Mark Cuban, Xavier Niel, and Eric Schmidt. NVIDIA, Samsung, and Temasek also backed the round.
The team includes CEO Alexandre LeBrun, Meta's former VP for Europe Laurent Solly as COO, Saining Xie as chief science officer, Pascale Fung as chief research and innovation officer, and Michael Rabbat as VP of world models. AMI Labs represents a direct bet that the next generation of autonomous agents will need to understand the physical world, not just language.
More: https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/09/yann-lecuns-ami-labs-raises-1-03-billion-to-build-world-models/
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Unlike large language models that learn from text, world models learn from reality — understanding basic principles of how the physical world works through real-world data. This makes them the foundation for autonomous agents that operate in the physical world: drones, robotaxis, industrial robots, and healthcare systems where the limitations of language-only AI are most consequential.
The round was co-led by Cathay Innovation, Greycroft, Hiro Capital, HV Capital, and Bezos Expeditions, with participation from Tim Berners-Lee, Jim Breyer, Mark Cuban, Xavier Niel, and Eric Schmidt. NVIDIA, Samsung, and Temasek also backed the round.
The team includes CEO Alexandre LeBrun, Meta's former VP for Europe Laurent Solly as COO, Saining Xie as chief science officer, Pascale Fung as chief research and innovation officer, and Michael Rabbat as VP of world models. AMI Labs represents a direct bet that the next generation of autonomous agents will need to understand the physical world, not just language.
More: https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/09/yann-lecuns-ami-labs-raises-1-03-billion-to-build-world-models/