Yann LeCun, one of the godfathers of modern AI, is departing Meta at the end of the year after 12 years with the company, where he served as founding director of Facebook AI Research (FAIR) and Chief AI Scientist. LeCun plans to launch a startup focused on world models, a type of AI technology that represents a fundamental shift from Meta's current strategic priorities. The departure marks a significant loss for Meta and signals a strategic divide over the path to advanced machine intelligence.
The exit follows substantial upheaval within Meta's AI division after the company's Llama 4 model disappointed developers and lagged behind competitors such as OpenAI and Google. In June, Meta invested £14.3 billion in data-labelling firm Scale AI and appointed its 28-year-old CEO, Alexandr Wang, to lead a new division called Meta Superintelligence Labs, restructuring that shifted LeCun's reporting line from Chief Product Officer Chris Cox to Wang. In October, Meta cut approximately 600 positions from its AI division, including researchers from FAIR, the laboratory LeCun founded. LeCun's new startup will develop systems that understand the physical world, have persistent memory, can reason, and can plan complex action sequences, with Meta serving as a partner in the venture.
LeCun's departure underscores the tension between long-term AI research focused on artificial general intelligence and Meta's pivot toward rapid deployment of commercially competitive large language models. The move reflects broader disagreements among deep-learning experts about whether current AI architectures can achieve human-level intelligence or whether fundamentally new computing approaches are required. Meta's strategic shift under CEO Mark Zuckerberg prioritises immediate product deployment over the foundational research that characterised LeCun's tenure, marking a pivotal moment for both the company and the AI research community.
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Sources:
1. https://www.euronews.com/next/2025/11/20/french-godfather-of-ai-yann-lecun-confirms-he-is-leaving-meta-to-launch-ai-start-up
2. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/19/meta-chief-ai-scientist-yann-lecun-is-leaving-the-company-.html
3. https://fortune.com/2025/11/11/who-is-yann-lecun-career-meta-ai-chief-scientist-nyu-turing/
