Yann LeCun, a leading artificial intelligence (A.I.) scientist and the head of Meta Platforms (META) A.I. department, is leaving the technology giant to start his own company.
LeCun said in a social media post that he plans to create a start-up that specializes in an A.I. technology that researchers describe as “world models.”
Specifically, the new company will analyze information beyond internet data to better represent the physical world.
“The goal of the start-up is to bring about the next big revolution in AI: systems that understand the physical world, have persistent memory, can reason…” wrote LeCun.
Meta Platforms said in a separate statement that it plans to partner with LeCun’s new A.I. company.
The departure comes with Meta’s A.I. unit in turmoil after the company released the fourth version of its Llama open-source large language model to a disappointing response.
Meta has spent billions of dollars recruiting top A.I. scientists and engineers, including a $14.5 billion U.S. investment in Scale AI to lure the start-up’s 28-year-old CEO Alexandr Wang.
Wang is now Meta Platforms’ new chief A.I. officer.
LeCun, age 65, joined Meta in 2013 to be director of it’s A.I. research division while maintaining a part-time teaching position at New York University (NYU).
LeCun, along with other A.I. scientists such as Yoshua Bengio and Geoffrey Hinton, is viewed as a godfather of modern A.I.
In 2019, LeCun was awarded the prestigious Turing Award, presented by the Association for Computing Machinery, for his research into A.I.
In October, Meta Platforms laid off 600 employees from its Superintelligence Labs division, including some who were part of the A.I. unit that LeCun helped get off the ground and run.
It’s being reported that the layoffs and new A.I. leadership team played a role in LeCun’s decision to leave Meta Platforms.
META stock has declined 2% this year to trade at $590.32 U.S. per share.
