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Yann LeCun raises $1B to build AI that understands the physical world

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Re: Yann LeCun raises $1B to build AI that understands the physical world

#101
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still just so surprised any time I encounter people who think AI will be overall good for humanity I pretty strongly think it will only benefit the rich and powerful while further oppressing and devaluing everyone else. I tend to think this is an obvious outcome and it would be obviously very bad (for most of us) So I wonder if you just think you will be one of the few who benefit at the expense of others, or do…

> So I wonder if you just think you will be one of the few who benefit at the expense of others It's not a zero sum game, IMO. It will benefit some, be neutral for others, negative for others. For instance, improved productivity could be good (and doesn't have to result in layoffs, Jevon's paradox will come into play, IMO, with increased demand). Easier/better/faster scientific research could be good too. Not everyon…

>It's not a zero sum game, IMO. It will benefit some, be neutral for others, negative for others.

This is literally a description of a zero sum game

Re: Yann LeCun raises $1B to build AI that understands the physical world

#102

Justifiable. There are a lot more degrees of freedom in world models. LLMs are fundamentally capped because they only learn from static text -- human communications about the world -- rather than from the world itself, which is why they can remix existing ideas but find it all but impossible to produce genuinely novel discoveries or inventions. A well-funded and well-run startup building physical world models (ground…

The term LLM is confusing your point because VLMs belong to the same bin according to Yann.

Using the term autoregressive models instead might help.

Re: Yann LeCun raises $1B to build AI that understands the physical world

#103

Regardless of your opinion of Yann or his views on auto regressive models being "sufficient" for what most would describe as AGI or ASI, this is probably a good thing for Europe. We need more well capitalized labs that aren't US or China centric and while I do like Mistral, they just haven't been keeping up on the frontier of model performance and seem like they've sort of pivoted into being integration specialists a…

I didn't really know who he was, so I went and found his wikipedia, which is written like either he wrote it himself to stroke his ego, or someone who likes him wrote it to stroke his ego: > He is the Jacob T. Schwartz Professor of Computer Science at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University. He served as Chief AI Scientist at Meta Platforms before leaving to work on his own startup compa…

Eh, that paragraph reads perfectly normal to me.

Either you have not read enough Wikipedia pages, or you have too much to complain about. (Or both.)

Re: Yann LeCun raises $1B to build AI that understands the physical world

#104
Yann LeCun seeks $5B+ valuation for world model startup AMI (Amilabs).

He has hired LeBrun to the helm as CEO.

AMI has also hired LeFunde as CFO and LeTune as head of post-training.

They’re also considering hiring LeMune as Head of Growth and LePrune to lead inference efficiency.

https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/19/yann-lecun-confirms-his-ne...

Re: Yann LeCun raises $1B to build AI that understands the physical world

#105

Adds up : We are seeing a clear exodus of both capital and talent from the US - with the current US administration’s shift toward cronyism - and the EU stands as the most compelling alternative with a uniform market of 500 million people and the last major federation truly committed to the rule of law.

You lost me at “uniform”…

Re: Yann LeCun raises $1B to build AI that understands the physical world

#106
post #70

Seems like it's the second largest seed round anywhere after Thinking Machines Labs? https://news.crunchbase.com/venture/biggest-seed-round-ai-th... That article is from June 2025 so may be out of date, and the definition of "seed round" is a bit fuzzy.

Thinking Machines looks half-dead already. The giant seed round proves investors were willing to fund Mira Murati, not that the company had built anything durable. Within months, it had already lost cofounder Andrew Tulloch to Meta, then cofounders Barret Zoph and Luke Metz plus researcher Sam Schoenholz to OpenAI; WIRED also reported that at least three other researchers left. At that point, citing it as evidence of…

Was just a grift

Re: Yann LeCun raises $1B to build AI that understands the physical world

#107
post #104

Yann LeCun seeks $5B+ valuation for world model startup AMI (Amilabs). He has hired LeBrun to the helm as CEO. AMI has also hired LeFunde as CFO and LeTune as head of post-training. They’re also considering hiring LeMune as Head of Growth and LePrune to lead inference efficiency. https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/19/yann-lecun-confirms-his-ne...

Why didn't they just call it LeLabs?

Re: Yann LeCun raises $1B to build AI that understands the physical world

#108
I feel like I'm the only one not getting the world models hype. We've been talking about them for decades now, and all of it is still theoretical. Meanwhile LLMs and text foundation models showed up, proved to be insanely effective, took over the industry, and people are still going "nah LLMs aren't it, world models will be the gold standard, just wait."

Re: Yann LeCun raises $1B to build AI that understands the physical world

#109
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yann Le Cun litteraly said this morning on the radio in France that it is headquarted in Paris and will pay taxes in France. Go figure…

For such companies, France also offers generous R&D tax credits (Crédit Impôt Recherche): companies can recover roughly 30% of eligible R&D expenses incurred in France as a tax credit, which can eventually be refunded (in cash) if the company has no taxable profit.

Is that alongside 100% of R&D expenses amortized in taxes when a company has taxable profit covering them?
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