Yann LeCun, the chief researcher in artificial intelligence at Meta, intends to depart from his position in the coming months to establish his own startup. According to the Financial Times, this information was shared with several close friends.
One source revealed that LeCun, a Turing Award winner, is already in early discussions about securing funding for his venture, but no official comments have been made by either side yet.
His departure comes at a time when Meta is reevaluating its artificial intelligence development strategy to better compete with firms like Google and OpenAI. As part of this new direction, Mark Zuckerberg has opted to prioritize the rapid implementation of new technologies over the extensive research conducted by LeCun's lab.
In recent months, Meta has been actively recruiting AI specialists from other companies to form a new team. In June, Alexander Wang, the former CEO of Scale AI, joined the company. Zuckerberg has also repeatedly lured employees from Apple and OpenAI, drawing criticism from Sam Altman.
These strategic shifts have led to some disagreements between Zuckerberg and LeCun, with the latter stating that while Meta's models could be beneficial, they would never reach the level of human cognition.