The Departure: Yann LeCun
- Chief AI Scientist → Departed
- Turing Award Winner (2018)
- 12 years at Meta
- Founded FAIR (2013)
- Godfather of Convolutional Neural Networks
→ Launching AMI Labs ($3.5B valuation target before launch)
The LeCun Thesis
- V-JEPA architecture (not LLMs)
- Learning from video & spatial data
- Physics and world understanding
- 5-10 year research horizon
“LLMs are a dead end for superintelligence”
The Arrival: Alexandr Wang
- New Chief AI Officer
- Founder & CEO of Scale AI
- Youngest self-made billionaire (was 25)
- $14.3B Scale AI deal with Meta
- Data infrastructure & AI operations expert
Execution over research. Scale over exploration.
The Context: Llama 4 Debacle
- Benchmark gaming admitted by Meta
- Public embarrassment in AI community
- Research credibility damaged
- Timing: right before LeCun departure
Signal: Research culture concerns → Shift to execution-focused leadership
The Fundamental Fork
| Dimension | LeCun/AMI | Meta/Wang |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | World Models | LLMs (Llama) |
| Learning | Video, Physics | Text at Scale |
| Timeline | 5-10 years | Now |
| Focus | Research purity | Commercial scale |
| Investment | $3.5B (target) | $72.2B (2025) |
“Execution over research, scale over exploration, LLMs over world models — Meta has made its bet. The infrastructure moat is the hedge.”
This is part of a comprehensive analysis. Read the full analysis on The Business Engineer.
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