- UAE-based investment firm Shorooq has participated in the $1.03 billion seed funding round of AMI Labs, the artificial intelligence startup founded by AI pioneer Yann LeCun, valuing the company at $3.5 billion pre-money.
- The round was co-led by Cathay Innovation, Greycroft, Hiro Capital, HV Capital, and Bezos Expeditions, with participation from global investors including Temasek, Nvidia, Mark Cuban, Eric Schmidt, and Xavier Niel.
- Founded in 2026 by Yann LeCun and Alexandre Lebrun, AMI Labs aims to develop next-generation AI based on “world model” architectures, enabling systems that can reason, plan, and understand physical environments, with initial applications across manufacturing, robotics, aerospace, and biomedical sectors.
Press release:
Shorooq today announced its participation in the $1.03 billion funding round of AMI Labs (Advanced Machine Intelligence), the newly launched artificial intelligence company founded by AI pioneer Yann LeCun, alongside a global consortium of leading venture capital firms and technology investors.
The round, one of the largest seed financings ever raised by an AI startup, was co-led by Cathay Innovation, Greycroft, Hiro Capital, HV Capital, and Bezos Expeditions and values AMI Labs at approximately $3.5 billion pre-money.
Shorooq joined the round alongside a distinguished group of global investors, including Temasek, Nvidia, SBVA, Mark Cuban, Eric Schmidt, Xavier Niel, and other institutional backers, reflecting strong conviction around AMI’s vision to develop a new class of artificial intelligence systems capable of reasoning, planning, and understanding the physical world.
Founded by Turing Award winner and former Meta Chief AI Scientist Yann LeCun, AMI Labs is pioneering an alternative approach to artificial intelligence centred on “world models”—systems designed to learn from spatial and real-world data rather than purely predicting text or images. This architecture aims to enable AI agents with deeper reasoning capabilities and a more robust understanding of cause and effect.
AMI Labs is led by CEO Alexandre LeBrun, formerly the co-founder and CEO of healthcare AI company Nabla, with LeCun serving as Executive Chair. The company is headquartered in Paris with additional offices in New York, Montreal, and Singapore and is expected to initially target enterprise applications across manufacturing, aerospace, robotics, and biomedical industries.
For Shorooq, the investment reflects the firm’s continued commitment to backing category-defining companies at the frontier of technological innovation.
Dr. Bilal Baloch, Partner at Shorooq, said: “AMI Labs represents one of the most ambitious efforts to redefine the foundations of artificial intelligence. Yann LeCun’s vision for world-model architectures could fundamentally expand what machines are capable of understanding and executing in the physical world. We are proud to support this next wave of AI innovation alongside some of the world’s leading investors.”
The investment also aligns with Shorooq’s growing global AI strategy, including its work bridging emerging AI ecosystems across the United States, Europe, and the Middle East.