Meta Chief AI Scientist Yann LeCun steps down; to pursue independent venture
Yann LeCun is leaving Meta to launch an AI venture, reflecting a broader shift as leading researchers exit major tech firms to pursue long-term research ambitions.
Meta's Chief AI Scientist, Yann LeCun, has decided to leave the tech giant after over a decade, signalling a notable shift for both the company and the broader artificial intelligence (AI) community.
He confirmed his plans in a LinkedIn post, stating that he is “creating a startup company to continue the Advanced Machine Intelligence research program (AMI) I have been pursuing over the last several years with colleagues at FAIR, at NYU, and beyond”.
He described AMI as an attempt to spark “the next big revolution in AI” through systems that “understand the physical world, have persistent memory, can reason, and can plan complex action sequences”. These point to the limitations of many current models, which excel at pattern recognition but lack stable internal representations of how the world works.
His move reflects a growing trend across large tech firms, as influential researchers leave corporate labs to build independent ventures shaped by their own long-term visions. In recent years, several high-profile figures have taken this route.
Mustafa Suleyman left Google’s DeepMind to co-found Inflection AI. Ilya Sutskever departed OpenAI to establish Safe Superintelligence, a company focused on long-range research into more reliable AI systems. Former Google researcher Jakob Uszkoreit co-founded Inceptive, which applies machine learning to biological design.
Independent labs allow researchers to pursue speculative ideas that may fall outside the strategic needs of major firms. Meta has spent the past few years investing heavily in AI through its Fundamental AI Research lab, known as FAIR. The company has published open-source models, expanded its work in generative systems and competed aggressively for top talent, often hiring from rival laboratories.
All these efforts have helped Meta remain a central player during a period of rapid change, although the competition for skilled researchers has been intense.
LeCun’s presence has long been a stabilising force in this space. His departure highlights the fluidity of the AI talent market and the challenge for large firms that want to maintain cutting-edge research while balancing commercial demands.
His influence at Meta has been substantial. His 12-year tenure included five years as FAIR’s founding director and seven as chief AI scientist.
Reflecting on this period, he said, “The impact of FAIR on the company, on the field of AI, on the tech community, and on the wider world has been spectacular,” adding that, “The creation of FAIR is my proudest non-technical accomplishment."
He noted that AMI has potential applications across many sectors, and pursuing it independently is a way to “maximise its broad impact”.
LeCun will remain with Meta until the end of the year.
Edited by Suman Singh