Yann LeCun, the Turing Award-winning former chief AI scientist at Meta, has launched his first commercial venture since leaving the company in November 2025. AMI, co-founded by LeCun, Michael Rabbat, Laurent Solly, Pascale Fung, Alexandre LeBrun, and Saining Xie, aims to build AI systems that understand the world, have persistent memory, can reason and plan, and are controllable and safe, according to an AMI press release. The startup's approach is based on the JEPA project and represents a bet against many AI labs like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta that believe scaling large language models will lead to human-level intelligence. According to www.wired.com, LeCun described extending LLMs to human-level intelligence as 'complete nonsense' and argued that most human reasoning is grounded in the physical world, not language, and that AI world models are necessary for human-level intelligence. AMI was already valued at three billion euros before this round, though the exact post-money valuation remains unclear. The financing was co-led by Cathay Innovation, Greycroft, Hiro Capital, HV Capital, and Bezos Expeditions, with other notable backers including Mark Cuban, Eric Schmidt, and Xavier Niel, according to research. AMI will have offices in Paris, Montreal, Singapore, and New York, and LeCun will continue working as a NYU professor in addition to leading the startup. According to www.wired.com, LeCun described AMI's aim to work with companies in manufacturing, biomedical, robotics, and other industries with lots of data, and gave an example of building a world model of an aircraft engine to help optimize efficiency, minimize emissions, or ensure reliability.
In a separate major funding development, Anysphere, the company behind the AI coding tool Cursor, is in talks to raise about $2 billion at a valuation over $50 billion, according to CNBC and Bloomberg News. Investors in Anysphere include Andreessen Horowitz, Nvidia, and Thrive Capital. The company's previous round in autumn 2025 valued it at around $29.3 billion. Arvid Lunnemark from Malmö co-founded Anysphere in 2022 and left in 2025; his stake is estimated at 4.5% worth around 12 billion SEK, according to Forbes.
Most human reasoning is grounded in the physical world, not language, and that AI world models are necessary for human-level intelligence.
French AI company Mistral has raised $830 million (€750 million) to build a data centre near Paris running on over 13,000 NVIDIA chips with 44 MW power, borrowing the money from seven banks. Mistral plans to build 200 MW of compute capacity across Europe by next year, and last month announced a $1.4 billion investment in Sweden for AI infrastructure.
Synera announced a $40 million (€35M) Series B round led by Revaia, with participation from Capgemini through ISAI Cap Venture and existing investors, according to multiple reports. The company's platform integrates with more than 80 engineering tools and enterprise systems. A Gartner 2025 CIO survey found that 86% of manufacturing respondents will increase investment in generative AI in 2026, with 86% expected to have deployed GenAI by 2026 and 97% by 2028. However, according to Gartner's 2024 AI Mandates survey, manufacturing CIOs report only an average of 41% of AI and GenAI prototypes reach production.
Extending LLMs to human-level intelligence is 'complete nonsense'.
Alva Labs launched an AI-driven recruitment system and raised 20 million through a convertible loan, according to multiple reports. The company was founded by three EQT veterans and has revenue of nearly 90 million SEK. Waiv announced a $33 million financing round co-led by OTB Ventures and Alpha Intelligence Capital, according to multiple reports. Waiv spun out from Owkin, where it previously operated as Owkin Dx, and its products include RlapsRisk BC, MSIntuit Suite, and BRCAura.
Halter, a New Zealand-based agritech company, is in talks to raise fresh funding led by Founders Fund, with the round heavily oversubscribed, according to multiple reports. Halter's valuation is approaching $2 billion. The company's system uses solar-powered collars that provide real-time data on location and health indicators such as fertility and digestion, and charges a monthly fee per animal.
AMI aims to work with companies in manufacturing, biomedical, robotics, and other industries with lots of data.
In cybersecurity, Intel's Nawras Sawsou warned that cyberattacks are increasingly based on behavior mimicking legitimate users rather than malicious code. Separately, the Linux Foundation launched a $12.5 million initiative funded by Anthropic, AWS, Github, Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI to help FOSS developers handle AI-generated bug reports, according to The Register.
Henrik Persson Ekdahl is investing 100 million SEK in new AI companies in South Africa, expecting 30-40 companies, according to multiple reports. The exact valuation of AMI after the latest funding round remains unclear, as does the exact total funding amount in USD due to currency conversion discrepancies. The status of Halter's funding round and its exact valuation, as well as the exact valuation of Anysphere in the current talks, are also not yet confirmed.
AMI could build a world model of an aircraft engine to help optimize efficiency, minimize emissions, or ensure reliability.