Shorooq Joins $1.03B Funding Round for AI Startup AMI Labs
Abu Dhabi, UAE — Shorooq has announced its participation in a $1.03 billion funding round for AMI Labs (Advanced Machine Intelligence), the newly launched artificial intelligence company founded by Turing Award winner and AI pioneer Yann LeCun.
The financing ranks among the largest seed rounds ever raised by an AI startup, valuing AMI Labs at approximately $3.5 billion pre-money.
The round was co-led by Cathay Innovation, Greycroft, Hiro Capital, HV Capital, and Bezos Expeditions, with participation from a distinguished group of global investors including Temasek, Nvidia, SBVA, Mark Cuban, Eric Schmidt, and Xavier Niel, alongside several institutional and technology investors.
AMI Labs is pioneering an alternative approach to artificial intelligence centered on “world models,” systems designed to learn from spatial and real-world data rather than relying solely on text or image prediction. This architecture aims to enable AI systems with deeper reasoning, planning capabilities, and a stronger understanding of cause-and-effect relationships in the physical world.
The company is led by CEO Alexandre LeBrun, the former co-founder and CEO of healthcare AI company Nabla, while Yann LeCun serves as Executive Chair.
Headquartered in Paris, AMI Labs also operates offices in New York, Montreal, and Singapore, and is expected to initially focus on enterprise applications across manufacturing, aerospace, robotics, and biomedical industries.
For Shorooq, the investment reflects the firm’s continued commitment to backing category-defining technology companies operating at the frontier of innovation.
Dr. Bilal Baloch, Partner at Shorooq, said:
“AMI Labs represents one of the most ambitious efforts to redefine the foundations of artificial intelligence. Yann LeCun’s vision for world-model architectures could fundamentally expand what machines are capable of understanding and executing in the physical world. We are proud to support this next wave of AI innovation alongside some of the world’s leading investors.”
The investment also aligns with Shorooq’s expanding global AI strategy, including its work bridging emerging AI ecosystems across the United States, Europe, and the Middle East.
