Meta's 'godfather of AI' departs the company to form his own startup — Turing award winner Yann LeCun advocates for the development of World Models over LLMs

Meta's chief AI scientist, Yann LeCun, is leaving to start his own startup, a significant loss for Meta after an aggressive hiring spree in 2025. LeCun, a Turing Award winner, is known for his work in deep learning and is a key figure in AI research. He advocates for the development of "World Models" over large language models (LLMs), focusing on using video and spatial data for AI understanding. Meta, on the other hand, has been investing heavily in LLMs, leading to LeCun's departure to explore new AI frontiers.