Dubai – Sharikat Mubasher: Venture capital firm Shorooq Partners has participated in a $1.03 billion seed funding round for AMI Labs, a newly established artificial intelligence company founded by AI pioneer Yann LeCun. As per a recent press release, this round is among the largest seed financings ever secured by an AI startup and values the company at approximately $3.5 billion before the investment.

The financing was co-led by Cathay Innovation, Greycroft, Hiro Capital, HV Capital, and Bezos Expeditions, with participation from several global investors including Temasek, Nvidia, SBVA, as well as entrepreneurs Mark Cuban, Eric Schmidt, and Xavier Niel.

AMI Labs, founded by LeCun—formerly chief AI scientist at Meta—is developing a new generation of artificial intelligence based on “world models.” This approach aims to enable AI systems to better interpret physical environments and understand cause-and-effect relationships, moving beyond traditional AI models focused mainly on predicting text or images.

For Shorooq, the investment highlights the firm’s continued focus on backing frontier technologies and strengthening its presence within global AI ecosystems spanning the United States, Europe, and the Middle East.