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French artificial intelligence startup AMI on Tuesday said it has raised $1 billion to develop AI systems designed to understand the physical world "in the way animals and humans do", unlike the language-based models behind chatbots such as ChatGPT. The company said it expected to produce "fairly universal intelligent systems" within five years.
By: FRANCE 24 Co-founder of French artificial intelligence startup AMI Yann LeCun attends the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos on January 23, 2025. © Fabrice Coffrini, AFP French artificial intelligence startup AMI – co-founded by Meta's former chief AI scientist Yann LeCun – announced Tuesday it has raised $1 billion to develop models able to understand the physical world.
This first funding round for AMI – which stands for Advanced Machine Intelligence – was carried out by five investment funds and attracted investment from several big groups, including Toyota, Nvidia and Samsung.
Notable names in tech also bought in, among them former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
AMI was valued around $3.5 billion before this funding round.
LeCun announced his departure from Meta in November, after 12 years with the company that owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
He now serves as AMI's non-executive chairman, while Alexandre Lebrun is the Paris-based startup's CEO.
Along with AMI's five other co-founders, he said he plans to "shift into a higher gear" on developing "world models" – AI systems designed to understand the physical world.
That goal, he added, aims to have AI understand the world "in the way animals and humans do" – unlike the large language models (LLMs) behind chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini.
Within three to five years, AMI plans to produce "fairly universal intelligent systems" that could be used for almost any task requiring intelligent machines, such as autonomous driving and robotics.
The French-American scientist, who continues to be a computer science professor at New York University, said AMI would focus on research and development in its first year.
Discussions with corporate partners could be held within six to 12 months, he added.
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