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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

#131

Post by pendenthistory »

paxys wrote: post #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."

I bet LLMs and world models will merge. World models essentially try to predict the future, with or without actions taken. LLMs with tokenized image input can also be made to predict the future image tokens. It's a very valuable supervised learning signal aside from pre-training and various forms of RL.

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

#132

Post by sanderjd »

brandonb wrote: post #114
ZeroCool2u wrote: post #32

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…

LeCun's technical approach with AMI will likely be based on JEPA, which is also a very different approach than most US-based or Chinese AI labs are taking. If you're looking to learn about JEPA, LeCun's vision document "A Path Towards Autonomous Machine Intelligence" is long but sketches out a very comprehensive vision of AI research: https://openreview.net/pdf?id=BZ5a1r-kVsf Training JEPA models within reach, even f…

Have you published anything about your health time series model? Sounds interesting!

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

#133

Post by gmerc »

drstewart wrote: post #36
mentalgear wrote: post #29

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.

"Exodus of capital" as if OpenAI didn't just raise 115b

That's a bonfire of capital into a gaping hole in the ground with zero chance outside of "military pork" and "overcharging the taxpayer" to ever make their money back. The brain capital loss here is what's going to spook investors.

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

#134

Post by andrepd »

az226 wrote: 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...

Bolson-ass hiring policy.

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

#135

Post by Imustaskforhelp »

re-thc wrote: post #54
Brajeshwar wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There seem to be other news articles mentioning that they are setting up in Singapore as their base. https://www.straitstimes.com/business/ai-godfather-raises-1-...

> they are setting up in Singapore as their base Europe in general has been tightening up their rules / taxes / laws around startups / companies especially tech and remote. It's been less friendly. these days.

This is a singaporean news article from a singporean company[0] (Had to look it up)

As such, They are more likely to talk about singapore news and exaggerate the claims.

Singapore isn't the Key location. From what I am seeing online, France is the major location.

Singapore is just one of the more satellite like offices. They have many offices around the world it seems.

[0]: https://www.sgpbusiness.com/company/Sph-Media-Limited

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

#136

Post by joe_mamba »

embedding-shape wrote: post #26
rvz wrote: post #15

Once again, US companies and VCs are in this seed round. Just like Mistral with their seed round. Europe again missing out, until AMI reaches a much higher valuation with an obvious use case in robotics. Either AMI reaches over $100B+ valuation (likely) or it becomes a Thinking Machines Lab with investors questioning its valuation. (very unlikely since world models has a use-case in vision and robotics)

> Europe again missing out I can't read the article, but American investors investing into European companies, isn't US the one missing out here? Or does "Europe" "win" when European investors invest in US companies? How does that work in your head?

>isn't US the one missing out here?

Why would the US miss out here? The US invests in something = the US owns part of something.

This isn't a zero sum game.

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

#137

Post by sofixa »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #101
sofixa wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

No, a zero sum game would require for the "winners" to take it from the "losers", and there is a limited amount to go around. If there is a majority of "winners" by expanding, some neutral, some negative, that is not a zero sum game.

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

#138

Post by basket_horse »

andrepd wrote: post #126
jsnell wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's "regardless", your opinion on LeCun being right should be highly correlated to your opinion on whether this is good for Europe. If you think that LLMs are sufficient and RSI is imminent (<1 year), this is horrible for Europe. It is a distracting boondoggle exactly at the wrong time.

It's been 6 months away for 5 years now. In that time we've seen relatively mild incremental changes, not any qualitative ones. It's probably not 6 months away.

But I swear this time is different! Just give me another 6 months!

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

#139

Post by jnd-cz »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #11

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 sum of human knowledge is more than enough to come up with innovative ideas and not every field is working directly with the physical world. Still I would say there's enough information in the written history to create virtual simulation of 3d world with all ohysical laws applying (to a certain degree because computation is limited).

What current LLMs lack is inner motivation to create something on their own without being prompted. To think in their free time (whatever that means for batch, on demand processing), to reflect and learn, eventually to self modify.

I have a simple brain, limited knowledge, limited attention span, limited context memory. Yet I create stuff based what I see, read online. Nothing special, sometimes more based on someone else's project, sometimes on my own ideas which I have no doubt aren't that unique among 8 billions of other people. Yet consulting with AI provides me with more ideas applicable to my current vision of what I want to achieve. Sure it's mostly based on generally known (not always known to me) good practices. But my thoughts are the same way, only more limited by what I have slowly learned so far in my life.

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

#140

Post by AndrewKemendo »

sofixa wrote: post #137
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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

No, a zero sum game would require for the "winners" to take it from the "losers", and there is a limited amount to go around. If there is a majority of "winners" by expanding, some neutral, some negative, that is not a zero sum game.

> No, a zero sum game would require for the "winners" to take it from the "losers"

You’re so close to getting it and I’m rooting for you

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