Shorooq has announced its participation in a $1.03 billion funding round for AMI Labs (Advanced Machine Intelligence), a newly launched artificial intelligence company founded by AI pioneer Yann LeCun. The round, which ranks among the largest seed financings ever raised by an AI startup, brings together a global consortium of venture capital firms and technology investors.
The funding round was co-led by Cathay Innovation, Greycroft, Hiro Capital, HV Capital, and Bezos Expeditions, valuing AMI Labs at approximately $3.5 billion pre-money.
Shorooq joined the round alongside a prominent group of investors including Temasek, Nvidia, SBVA, Mark Cuban, Eric Schmidt, Xavier Niel, and several institutional backers. The strong investor interest reflects growing confidence in AMI Labs’ vision to build a new generation of artificial intelligence systems capable of reasoning, planning, and understanding the physical world.
AMI Labs was founded by Turing Award winner and former Meta Chief AI Scientist Yann LeCun. The company is developing an alternative AI architecture based on so-called “world models,” which are designed to learn from spatial and real-world data rather than relying solely on predicting text or images. The approach aims to create AI agents with deeper reasoning capabilities and a stronger understanding of cause-and-effect relationships.
The company is led by CEO Alexandre LeBrun, previously the co-founder and CEO of healthcare AI startup Nabla, while LeCun serves as Executive Chair. Headquartered in Paris, AMI Labs also operates offices in New York, Montreal, and Singapore.
Initially, the company plans to focus on enterprise applications across sectors including manufacturing, aerospace, robotics, and biomedical industries.
For Shorooq, the investment underscores its strategy of backing companies at the forefront of technological innovation.
“AMI Labs represents one of the most ambitious efforts to redefine the foundations of artificial intelligence,” said Dr. Bilal Baloch, Partner at Shorooq. “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 broader global AI strategy as the firm continues to strengthen connections between emerging AI ecosystems across the United States, Europe, and the Middle East.
