French-American AI researcher Yann LeCun has secured approximately $1.03 billion in funding for a new artificial intelligence startup called Advanced Machine Intelligence (AMI), which will operate from Paris, New York, Montreal and Singapore, Euronews reported.
According to LeCun, the company will focus on developing AI systems designed to better understand and interact with the real world. The startup plans to build so-called «world models,» training AI using real-world data from sensors and cameras.
AMI believes such systems could improve safety and control in technologies where reliability is critical. Potential applications include robotics, automation, wearable devices and healthcare technologies.
The company has also announced several key leadership appointments. Alex LeBrun, an experienced AI entrepreneur, will serve as chief executive officer, while former Meta and Google researcher Saining Xie has been named chief science officer.
In 2018, LeCun received the Turing Award, often considered the highest honor in computer science, together with AI researchers Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio for their contributions to deep learning.
