VCs & AI Experts for Sifted Story on AMI Labs Impact in Europe

One company has been dominating conversations, WhatsApp exchanges and hot takes on LinkedIn for the past month: AMI Labs. The startup, recently launched by Meta’s former chief AI scientist Yann LeCun, is causing near-unprecedented levels of excitement, both in French tech and abroad. There’s not an investor I’ve spoken to who doesn’t have a view on LeCun’s pitch to build “world models”, a type of AI that can understand the physical world instead of merely generating text like large-language models (LLMs). LeCun initially set out to raise €500m for his new project; last week my colleague Anne Sraders and I reported [url=https://email.sifted.eu/e3t/Ctc/LZ+113/d2mfCN04/VVJrm93qlmBFW85lld22-NG5yW8hW1h35JMKF6N5r_RRT3qgz0W8wLKSR6lZ3lbN5r967_h3vTsN8w_5SryBt42W2lqVH86j2RfhW3t0nZx72-mWSW6fZhVw8dWRtlV97SFF3sW7X4W1kCpbz8CBzhSW8gNKKt303pw5VgmVl-1GTrm4N215W7P5MsNnMc6Z4LDDdFdW6g6PHx36GYhnW1H6FhL7dFWCmN6bWPJr9QnTfW1nKgWs5Pyq93W5F1JFy8GptG5W6RGhZW7fRvNfW9bc7ZF547lTCW5QS3Mb4WMW_PW9hpVLw3GM7XvW1tmtt81VbwDGW6-zzrR10BC7jW7kxHs13bvpddW1Zq89W12HBPVW7DQlvl98ZgTLVnZR0y7K3CqXN22vNdC67P0yW608_mv2WsPR3f2dTbWM04]he’s attracted at least $1.5bn in investor interest, and is likely to close a bigger round than planned[/url]. Sources also told us chip titan Nvidia and Singapore-based investor Temasek are in talks to back the company. AMI Labs will have a base in Paris, and VCs are piling in to be part of the fun. “Every single investor in Paris is overexcited and wants to be a part of it,” one investor tells me, “even for small tickets that’ll give insignificant weight in the cap table and governance.” I’m curious to know what might happen next: how will LeCun’s bet to build a world-leading AI company focusing on a new type of AI model affect Europe’s tech sector? Send me your thoughts [url=mailto:[email redacted]]here[/url].