Chief AI scientist Yann LeCun announces he is leaving Meta to found a startup

Meta

Yann LeCun announced he will leave Meta at year's end to found a startup researching AI that understands the physical world, has persistent memory, and can reason and plan. Meta will partner with the company on complementary research.

• LeCun joined Meta in 2013 and co-founded its FAIR research lab; departure follows Meta's $14.3B investment in Scale AI and cuts of ~600 AI positions.
• His startup focus reflects skepticism toward large language models alone; LeCun has long advocated for open-source AI like Meta's Llama.
• He also serves as part-time professor at NYU and won the 2019 Turing Award.