C4 Ventures backs Yann LeCun’s AMI Labs in a landmark $1B round

C4 Ventures joins the $1 billion round of AMI Labs (Advanced Machine Intelligence Labs), one of the most ambitious frontier AI companies launched in Europe in recent years.

Building the next generation of artificial intelligence

Founded by Yann LeCun, Turing Award laureate and a pioneering figure in modern AI, alongside Alexandre LeBrun, serial entrepreneur and former CEO of Nabla, Laurent Solly, former VP Europe at Meta, as well as Pascale Fung, Saining Xie and Michael Rabbat, AMI Labs is building the next generation of artificial intelligence: unified “world models” designed to understand, predict, plan and act in the physical world.

 While many companies focus on bigger language models, AMI is training AI on real world data such as video and sensor data so it can interact with the physical world, from robotics to industry and healthcare.

Headquartered in Paris, with core teams in New York, Montréal and Singapore, AMI Labs brings together a team with exceptional academic and technical depth in artificial intelligence, combined with strong experience scaling research into products within high-performance technology organizations.

A defining bet on foundational AI from Europe

For C4 Ventures, this investment reflects a clear conviction: the next breakthrough in AI will come from foundational architectures capable of interacting with and reasoning about the physical world.

“AMI Labs embodies scientific ambition at the highest level,” said Pascal Cagni, Founder and CEO of C4 Ventures. “Yann LeCun is one of the architects of modern artificial intelligence. His work on predictive world models opens a path beyond purely generative systems toward more autonomous and reliable AI. Supporting a company of this potential, built from Paris with global ambition, is fully aligned with the mission of C4 Ventures III and our belief that Europe can produce global champions in advanced AI.”

 

“AMI Labs combines three elements we rarely see together: exceptional scientific leadership, a genuine architectural shift beyond incremental LLM optimization, and a credible strategy to anchor the technology in real world use cases,” added Valère Rames, Partner at C4 Ventures. “We believe world models represent a fundamental step toward AI systems that can reason, plan and operate safely in complex environments.”

C4 Ventures III: Backing breakthroughs early

Backing AMI Labs marks the second investment of C4 Ventures III, following the recent announcement of Bedrock Robotics, and reinforces the fund’s strategy of backing category-defining AI and deep tech companies from their earliest stages.

Launched in September 2025, C4 Ventures III focuses on early-stage AI and deep tech across Europe. Since its inception in 2014, C4 Ventures has invested in 57 startups, 16 of which became unicorns, and has completed over 20 exits, including two IPOs on the NYSE (Riskified and Via) and seven corporate M&A transactions.

Discover more in our Linkedin post:  The next chapter of AI is being written in Paris.

For more details on AMI Labs and the round, we've selected some press clippings:

• The New York Times:Advanced Machine Intelligence Labs, founded by Yann LeCun and other ex-Meta researchers, has raised more than $1 billion from investors
• Reuters: Ex-Meta AI chief Yann LeCun's AMI raises $1.03 billion for alternative AI approach
• The French Tech Journal: Yann LeCun’s AMI Labs Launches With $1.03 Billion to Build AI That Understands the Real World
• TechCrunch: Yann LeCun’s AMI Labs raises $1.03 billion to build world models
• Le Monde (in French, also available in English): Yann LeCun raises €900 million for his AI startup based in France
• Les Échos (in French): AI: Yann LeCun’s Paris-based startup shatters records, becomes a unicorn in its first funding round
• Maddyness (in French): Yann LeCun’s artificial intelligence startup, AMI Labs, raises more than $1 billion from an international consortium of investors, becoming a unicorn at launch.