Synera announced a $40 million (€35M) Series B funding round led by Revaia, with participation from Capgemini through ISAI Cap Venture and all existing Series A investors. The company is an agentic AI platform orchestrating the full industrial engineering value chain, often described as 'JARVIS for engineers'. It integrates with more than 80+ engineering tools and enterprise systems, enabling automation while keeping data secure through on-premises deployment. According to Gartner, 86% of manufacturing respondents indicated their enterprise would increase investment in generative AI in 2026, with 86% expected to have deployed GenAI by 2026 and 97% by 2028. However, only an average of 41% of AI and GenAI prototypes reach production in manufacturing.
AMI, a new Paris-based startup co-founded by Turing Award winner Yann LeCun, secured €890 million in funding from investors including Nvidia, Samsung, Toyota, Eric Schmidt, and Jeff Bezos. AMI announced Monday it has raised more than $1 billion to develop AI world models. The financing was co-led by investors such as Cathay Innovation, Greycroft, Hiro Capital, HV Capital, and Bezos Expeditions, with other notable backers including Mark Cuban, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and French billionaire and telecommunications executive Xavier Niel. AMI aims to develop AI systems that understand the physical world more comprehensively, moving beyond large language models, based on architectures like the JEPA project initiated at Meta. LeCun has been one of the AI industry's most prominent researchers speaking out about the limitations of these AI models, and his startup represents a bet against many of the world's biggest AI labs like OpenAI, Anthropic, and even his former workplace, Meta, which believe that scaling up LLMs will eventually deliver AI systems with human-level intelligence or even superintelligence. LeCun is well known for being outspoken, but as a pioneer of modern AI that won a Turing award back in 2018, his skepticism carries weight, though he does not dismiss the overall utility of LLMs, which have powered viral products such as ChatGPT and Claude Code.
Most human reasoning is grounded in the physical world, not language, and that AI world models are necessary to develop true human-level intelligence.
Mistral raised $830 million (€750 million) to build a new data centre near Paris, which will run on over 13,000 NVIDIA chips and have compute power of 44 megawatts. The company is looking to build 200 megawatts of compute capacity across Europe by next year, equivalent to two hyperscale data centres. Last month, Mistral announced a $1.4 billion (€1.2 billion) investment in Sweden to build AI infrastructure, including a data centre.
Synera's platform capabilities come amid a manufacturing sector eager to adopt generative AI but struggling with implementation. According to Gartner, the high percentage of manufacturing firms planning to increase GenAI investment contrasts sharply with the low rate of prototypes reaching production. By integrating with numerous engineering tools and emphasizing on-premises data security, Synera positions itself as a solution for industrial automation in a data-sensitive environment.
The idea that you're going to extend the capabilities of LLMs to the point that they're going to have human-level intelligence is complete nonsense.
Waiv announced a $33 million financing round co-led by OTB Ventures and Alpha Intelligence Capital, with participation from Serena Data Ventures, Karista, and SistaFund. The Paris-based company, spun out from Owkin, is catalyzing AI precision testing and building diagnostic infrastructure for precision oncology. Its products include RlapsRisk BC, MSIntuit Suite, and BRCAura, supporting biomarker discovery, detection, and treatment-response insights.
Halter, a New Zealand-based startup fitting livestock with AI-powered collars, is closing in on a $2bn valuation and in talks to raise fresh funding led by Founders Fund. Its system uses solar-powered collars linked to a mobile app to provide real-time data on location and health indicators, and allows remote herd management through sound and vibration signals. Halter charges a monthly fee per animal, shifting livestock management towards a subscription-based model. This approach addresses challenges in the US, where cattle herds have fallen to their lowest level in decades due to drought, rising costs, and an ageing workforce.
AMI aims to work with companies in manufacturing, biomedical, robotics, and other industries that have lots of data.
Alva Labs, a recruitment software company founded by three EQT veterans, generates nearly 90 million in revenue from its science-based tests. The company is launching an AI-driven recruitment system and raising 20 million through a convertible loan.
The Linux Foundation has started a new initiative, funded with $12.5 million from Anthropic, AWS, Github, Google, Microsoft, and Open AI, to help FOSS developers manage AI-generated bug reports. AI tools enable automatic finding and reporting of security issues in software at a much larger scale, but many reports are low-quality or hard to verify.
For example, he says AMI could build a realistic world model of an aircraft engine and work with the manufacturer to help them optimize for efficiency, minimize emissions, or ensure reliability.
Entrepreneur and investor Henrik Persson Ekdahl is investing 100 million kronor in new AI companies in South Africa, expecting to fund 30-40 companies.
AI company Natively is changing its name to Newly, raising 15 million kronor, and launching a feature to help app creators get past tech giants' strict app store reviews.
AMI was co-founded by LeCun and several leaders he worked with at Meta, including the company's former director of research science, Michael Rabbat; former vice president of Europe, Laurent Solly; and former senior director of AI research, Pascale Fung. Other co-founders include Alexandre LeBrun, former CEO of the AI health care startup Nabla, who will serve as AMI's CEO, and Saining Xie, a former Google DeepMind researcher who will be the startup's chief science officer.
Investor details for AMI show a mix of venture capital and high-profile individuals, with LeCun continuing to work as a New York University professor in addition to leading the startup. AMI will be the first commercial endeavor for LeCun since his departure from Meta in November 2025.
In context, LLMs have driven much of the recent AI boom, but AMI's approach seeks to differentiate by focusing on world models that comprehend physical dynamics.
Uncertainties persist in several areas, including Halter's exact valuation and whether its funding round led by Founders Fund has been finalized, as well as the timeline and location for Mistral's planned 200 megawatts of compute capacity across Europe. Additionally, how AMI's technology differs technically from existing AI world models and what its initial applications will be remain unspecified, while the specific challenges or regulatory hurdles that Newly's feature aims to address for app store approvals are not detailed. The targets of Henrik Persson Ekdahl's South African investment also await clarification.