Meta AI Head Yann LeCun Set to Leave for New Start-up

Meta’s chief AI scientist Yann LeCun plans to leave the company to start his own venture, as Mark Zuckerberg reshapes Meta’s AI operations. LeCun, a Turing Award winner and AI pioneer, has informed associates of his departure in the coming months and is in early fundraising talks. Both LeCun and Meta declined to comment.

Shares of Meta fell over 1% on the news.

Zuckerberg is shifting Meta’s focus from long-term research at the Fundamental AI Research Lab (FAIR), which LeCun has led since 2013, toward faster AI model and product deployment to compete with OpenAI and Google. Over the summer, Zuckerberg hired Alexandr Wang to lead a new “superintelligence” team, acquiring a 49% stake in his company for $14.3 billion.

Zuckerberg also created an exclusive team, TBD Lab, offering $100 million packages to staff from rivals to accelerate large language model development. As part of the restructuring, LeCun now reports to Wang rather than chief product officer Chris Cox.