Meta‘s Chief AI Scientist Yann LeCun Plans Exit to Launch Startup
MENLO PARK, CA – Yann LeCun, Meta’s chief AI Scientist and a pioneering figure in artificial intelligence, is planning to leave the company to start his own AI venture, according to a post on X (formerly Twitter) today. The move comes amid a meaningful strategic shift at Meta, spearheaded by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, toward the rapid commercialization of AI and away from long-term research – a direction LeCun has publicly questioned.
LeCun’s departure marks a pivotal moment for Meta’s AI ambitions and underscores growing tensions within the company over the path to achieving “superintelligence.” He recently responded on X, stating that before urgently figuring out how to control AI systems smarter than humans, researchers need to have the beginning of a hint of a design for a system smarter than a house cat. His planned exit follows mass layoffs within Meta’s AI research division, FAIR, and a restructuring that placed him under the leadership of Alexandr Wang, the 28-year-old founder of Scale AI, hired by Zuckerberg with a $14.3 billion investment.
For over a decade, LeCun led Meta’s FAIR team, focusing on developing “world models” designed for planning and reasoning. However, Zuckerberg has increasingly prioritized the swift deployment of commercial AI products, exemplified by the creation of the exclusive TBD Lab, staffed with talent poached from competitors like OpenAI and Google with compensation packages reaching up to $250 million. The shift reflects mounting pressure from Wall Street for Meta to demonstrate a return on its substantial AI investments, following the largely unsuccessful foray into the metaverse. LeCun’s new venture will reportedly focus on independent AI research.
