On November 11, the Financial Times reported that as Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg seeks to significantly adjust the company’s AI business, Meta’s chief AI scientist Yann LeCun plans to leave the social media giant to start his own startup.


Zuckerberg and Yang Likun

Yang Likun is known as one of the pioneers of modern AI and a Turing Award winner. According to people familiar with the matter, Yang Likun has told colleagues,He will be leaving Meta in the coming months.At the same time, the French-American scientist is also in early-stage talks with potential investors to raise funds for new entrepreneurial projects.

Likun Yang's next venture will focus on advancing his research on world models, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Likun Yang's upcoming departure comes as Zuckerberg is dramatically adjusting his AI strategy. Zuckerberg’s goal is to challenge competitors such as OpenAI and Google and develop more powerful AI technology.

Zuckerberg’s “change of heart”

Zuckerberg has shifted the company's focus from long-term research at Meta's Fundamental AI Research Laboratory (FAIR) to more quickly launching AI models and products because he believes Meta has fallen behind in the AI ​​competition. However, since 2023, FAIR has been led by Yang Likun.

This summer, Zuckerberg spent $14.3 billion to hire Alexandr Wang, the 28-year-old founder of the data annotation startup Scale AI, and acquired 49% of his company's shares. Wang will lead Meta's newly established "super intelligence" team.

In this round of comprehensive AI layout, Zuckerberg also personally selected members to form an elite team called TBD Lab, providing salaries of up to US$100 million to recruit talents from competitors such as OpenAI and Google to promote the iteration of large language models.

After this structural adjustment, Yang Likun, who originally reported to Meta Chief Product Officer Chris Cox, now reports to Wang Tao.

However, Yang Likun has long believed that although the large language model Zuckerberg placed at the core of his strategy is "useful", it will never achieve human-like reasoning and planning capabilities. This makes his differences with Zuckerberg’s AI vision increasingly clear.

As of press time, Yang Likun had declined to comment. Meta has not yet commented.