YANN LECUN
Perplexity’s AI got some answers wrong, but it helped Aravind Srinivas find his first users
Perplexity’s early growth came from an unexpected way, people searching for their own social media profiles and sharing the AI’s sometimes amusing answers online. Aravind Srinivas explains how the experiment attracted attention and helped shape the startup’s shift from Twitter search to a broader AI-powered answer engine.
Before Perplexity, Aravind Srinivas built a Twitter search tool that changed his startup's direction
Aravind Srinivas and his co-founders experimented with a Twitter search tool before focusing on Perplexity's web search product. An unexpected response to a feature that summarised social media profiles helped shape their next move, eventually leading to a broader mission centred on knowledge and curiosity.
Who are the biggest investors backing Anthropic? A look at key stakeholders
Anthropic’s planned IPO is set to test public-market appetite for artificial intelligence companies. Backed by Amazon, Google, leading venture capital firms, global institutions and prominent individual investors, the Claude maker has seen its valuation surge through successive funding rounds.
Anthropic's top investors include Amazon, Google, Fidelity Management
Anthropic is preparing for its initial public offering, supported by significant investments from Amazon and Google. The company's valuation has increased significantly through numerous funding rounds over recent periods. Key investors like ICONIQ Capital and Coatue Management have also expressed confidence in its potential. Anthropic's partnerships with technology leaders enhance its resources for advancing AI development.
Scientists call for international body to oversee advanced AI
In a groundbreaking initiative, approximately 400 scientists, including specialists in AI, are advocating for the establishment of an international regulatory body for AI systems. They recommend that advanced AI technologies remain air-gapped and be monitored independently, aiming to strengthen AI safety following recent vulnerabilities. This movement is gaining traction among policymakers worldwide, emphasizing the need for stringent containment standards and formal regulation in AI development.
From 'lower middle class' Tamil family, he missed IIT Madras CSE by just 0.01, was rejected by MIT. Today, he is the CEO of a $20 billion AI startup
Perplexity cofounder and CEO Aravind Srinivas turned academic setbacks into a remarkable AI career. After missing IIT Madras Computer Science by 0.01 CGPA, he taught himself coding and machine learning, eventually topping a Computer Science class. MIT rejected his PhD application, but UC Berkeley admitted him. After working with OpenAI and Google DeepMind, Srinivas cofounded Perplexity in 2022. The startup reached a $20 billion valuation in 2025, while Forbes estimates his net worth at $2.1 billion.
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Doomers and boosters: who's who in the AI wars
The furious debate over artificial intelligence has hardened into warring camps -- and a cautious middle. Today, most of the doomers warning against the impact of artificial intelligence come from inside the companies themselves, from academia, or both.
The next great leap: AI first learnt the words. Now it is reaching for the world
World Labs’ Atlas signals a possible shift in AI from large language models to “world models” that understand 3D environments. Built by Fei-Fei Li’s team, Atlas can reconstruct scenes from images. Unlike LLMs trained mainly on internet data, world models aim to understand space, movement and causality, enabling robots, autonomous vehicles, digital twins and simulations to interact more intelligently with the physical world.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei defends AI regulation, argues it can boost competition
It started with a comment from investor Gavin Baker on the All-In Podcast, which set off a public argument about Anthropic's ambitions, pulling in one of the top researchers in this field, Advanced Machine Intelligence chair Yann LeCunn, and a public essay from Amodei himself.
Tech entrepreneurs seeking the next AI frontier are pivoting from chatbots to 'world models'
AI is evolving beyond text-based chatbots, with researchers now focusing on "world models." These advanced systems aim to teach AI to understand and interact with the physical world, much like humans do. This shift is attracting significant investment, with a new generation of entrepreneurs and prominent scientists exploring how AI can learn spatial and temporal structures, paving the way for smarter robots and more immersive virtual environments.
Why Yann LeCun says Anthropic’s Dario Amodei knows nothing about the impact of AI on jobs
AI pioneer Yann LeCun criticises AI leaders like Dario Amodei and Geoffrey Hinton for their views on AI's impact on jobs, arguing they lack expertise in labour economics. LeCun urges the public to consult economists instead, highlighting a growing divide on AI's disruptive potential for the workforce.
Ex-Meta AI chief Yann LeCun's AMI raises $1 billion for alternative AI approach
AMI aims to build systems capable of reasoning and planning in complex real-world settings, LeCun said in an interview with Reuters. He added that current AI approaches based on predicting the next word or pixel will not produce broadly capable intelligent agents by themselves.
AI superpark in Bengaluru to generate data for world models
Umakant Soni, cofounder of Bharat1.ai, said the idea of the park is to create AI models grounded in the real world and the park is equipped with robots, GPUs and researchers, which will create data for the real world.
Current AI technology is limited, just good at language: AMI Labs executive chairman Yann LeCun
Silicon Valley is entirely focused on LLMs, stealing each other’s engineers and pursuing similar approaches. This leaves the industry short-sighted, said the tech leader. LeCun also argued that human-level intelligence cannot be achieved by training AI systems solely on human-produced text. Instead, he said, future systems will need to learn from sensory inputs and develop a deeper understanding of how the real world works.
An AI pioneer warns the tech 'herd' is marching into a dead end
AI pioneer Yann LeCun argues large language models are a dead end for achieving human-level intelligence. After leaving Meta, he criticizes Silicon Valley’s herd mentality, defends open source and pursues alternative AI systems that can plan, learn from the real world and rival global competitors.
Nick Clegg joins VC firm HIRO Capital to target spatial AI opportunities
Clegg will join HIRO's general partners Luke Alvarez, Cherry Freeman and British computer games legend Ian Livingstone in the new HIRO III fund, which is aiming to have more than 500 million euros ($582 million) to deploy.
Meta's chief AI scientist Yann LeCun exits to start new AI research company
LeCun said in a social media post that Meta will partner with the new startup and that some of the research will overlwith Meta's commercial interests and some of it will not.
Zuckerberg finally snaps! LeCun’s Meta exit reportedly sparked by $15 billion Alexandr Wang deal
Meta’s AI chief Yann LeCun reportedly left after CEO Mark Zuckerberg put Alexandr Wang in charge of AI. LeCun disagreed with using large language models for advanced AI, while Wang leads the new “superintelligence” division. Meta is racing to catch up with ChatGPT, Google, and Microsoft, with big investments in AI infrastructure and faster product-focused innovation.
Meta share price down in pre-market by over 1%, Facebook, Instagram owner chief AI scientist plans to leave company, claim reports
Owner of Facebook and Instagram has significantly increased its investments in artificial intelligence, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg reorganizing the company's AI initiatives under Superintelligence Labs.
Meta chief AI scientist Yann LeCun plans to exit to launch startup, FT reports
Meta's chief artificial intelligence scientist Yann LeCun is planning to leave the social media company to set up his own startup, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter.
Meta guru urges Europe to gamble more on AI
The major investment deal aims to build infrastructure for AI, led by Japanese giant SoftBank and ChatGPT-maker OpenAI. Tesla and X chief Elon Musk as well as Anthropic head Dario Amodei have also expressed doubts about the plans. "It is not clear that any entity has this amount of money to invest, even over five years," Meta's chief AI scientist Yann LeCun said in an interview on Thursday.
Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw meets Meta's chief AI scientist to discuss opportunities in artificial intelligence
Ashwini Vaishnaw, Minister of Information and Broadcasting, on Saturday, met chief AI Scientist of Meta, Yann LeCun to discuss opportunities in the area of artificial intelligence, the minister said in a post on social media X.
AI needs decade+ to reach human-like smarts, says pioneer
Yann LeCun, vice president and chief AI scientist at Meta told ET that the path to achieving AGI (artificial general intelligence) is through AI systems being conscious of the physical world, having persistent memory and being able to reason.
AI is not going to take over us, says Meta's top official
According to Yann LeCun, vice president and chief AI scientist at Meta, everybody is going to be smarter because of that. "It's not just people like us in the tech community or in academia. It's going to be everyone. Everyone in India, even in rural areas, can ask questions to their AI assistants in their own language or for health issues, whatever. And it's a very different future that will become possible," he added.
OpenAI working on new reasoning technology under code name 'Strawberry'
The project, details of which have not been previously reported, comes as the Microsoft-backed startup races to show that the types of models it offers are capable of delivering advanced reasoning capabilities.
Meta guru says ChatGPT-style AI is out-of-date
"Today AI and machine learning really sucks. Humans have common sense, machines don't," Yann LeCun told reporters at a Meta launch event in Paris.
OpenAI's ChatGPT is a product, not AI research: Meta chief AI scientist
Meta chief AI scientist Yann LeCun has said that OpenAI's ChatGPT represents a product, not actual research and development in the field of artificial intelligence (AI).
Godfathers of deep learning get turing award
Three scientists — called the ‘godfathers of AI’ for laying the foundations for many of the recent advances in AI— are being honored with this year award
Facebook's new tool spots 'hidden' faces in photos
The algorithm will recognize a person through their unique characteristics such as hairdo, clothing, body shape and pose.
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