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Yann LeCun
Yann LeCun's file: convolutional networks, NYU, FAIR, open research, and a long-running argument for how machines should learn about the world.
LeCun helped make convolutional neural networks practical, built a long academic career at NYU, founded Facebook's fundamental AI lab, spent a decade arguing for open research and world models, then left Meta to build a new lab around an alternative path beyond language-model scaling.
HOW THE HELL DID YANN LECUN GET HERE?
1988
THE CONVNET PIONEER ARRIVES AT BELL LABS
After doctoral work and a Toronto postdoc, LeCun joined AT&T Bell Laboratories in 1988, where his neural-network research helped establish convolutional methods for computer vision.
RECEIPTS: Meta AIfirst-party
2003
HE MOVES THE DEEP-LEARNING PROGRAM TO NYU
LeCun joined New York University as a professor in 2003 and later became founding director of the NYU Center for Data Science.
RECEIPTS: Meta AIfirst-party
Dec 2013
FACEBOOK HANDS HIM A NEW AI LAB
LeCun joined Facebook in 2013 to create Facebook AI Research, the fundamental-research organization later known as FAIR.
RECEIPTS: Meta AIfirst-party
Mar 27, 2019
THE DEEP-LEARNING TRIO GETS THE TURING AWARD
ACM named LeCun, Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio recipients of the 2018 Turing Award for conceptual and engineering breakthroughs that made deep neural networks central to computing.
RECEIPTS: ACMreported
Nov 19, 2025
HE LEAVES META TO BET AGAINST THE LLM CONSENSUS
LeCun announced he would leave Meta at the end of 2025 to launch a company focused on Advanced Machine Intelligence and world-model research.
RECEIPTS: Reutersreported
Mar 10, 2026
THE NEW WORLD-MODEL LAB RAISES A BILLION DOLLARS
Advanced Machine Intelligence raised $1.03 billion at a $3.5 billion pre-money valuation to pursue LeCun's alternative approach built around reasoning, planning and world models.
RECEIPTS: Reutersreported