# Yann LeCun

Yann LeCun is a French-American computer scientist known for pioneering convolutional neural networks and serving as Chief AI Scientist at Meta. He co-founded AMI Labs in 2025 and won the 2018 Turing Award.

Yann André Le Cun (born 8 July 1960) is a French-American computer scientist working in artificial intelligence, machine learning, computer vision, robotics, and image compression. He is best known for his pioneering work on optical character recognition and computer vision using convolutional neural networks (CNNs), a biologically inspired model that became foundational to modern [deep-learning](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/deep-learning). He is also one of the main creators of the DjVu image compression technology and co-developed the Lush programming language with Léon Bottou.

LeCun served as Chief AI Scientist at Meta Platforms before co-founding Advanced Machine Intelligence Labs (AMI Labs) in December 2025. He holds the Jacob T. Schwartz Professorship of Computer Science at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University. In 2018, he received the Turing Award jointly with Yoshua Bengio and Geoffrey Hinton for their contributions to deep learning, and the three are sometimes called the "Godfathers of AI" or "Godfathers of Deep Learning."

## Early life and education

LeCun was born on 8 July 1960 in Soisy-sous-Montmorency, a suburb of Paris. His surname derives from the old Breton form Le Cunff, originating from the Guingamp region in northern Brittany; Yann is the Breton form of Jean. He earned a Diplôme d'Ingénieur from ESIEE Paris in 1983 and a PhD in computer science from Université Pierre et Marie Curie (now Sorbonne University) in 1987. During his doctoral work, he proposed an early form of backpropagation, an algorithm essential for training [neural networks](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/neural-network). From 1987, he spent a year as a postdoctoral researcher at the [University of Toronto](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/university-of-toronto), supervised by Geoffrey Hinton. LeCun has American citizenship and three sons.

## Bell Labs and early career

In 1988, LeCun joined the Adaptive Systems Research Department at AT&T Bell Laboratories in Holmdel, New Jersey, led by Lawrence D. Jackel. There he developed several machine learning methods, including convolutional neural networks (known as LeNet), the "Optimal Brain Damage" regularization technique, and Graph Transformer Networks (similar to conditional random fields). He applied these to handwriting recognition and optical character recognition, and his bank check recognition system was widely deployed by NCR and other companies.

In 1996, he became head of the Image Processing Research Department at AT&T Labs-Research, part of Lawrence Rabiner's Speech and Image Processing Research Lab. His work there focused on DjVu, an image compression format for efficient distribution of scanned documents, later used by the Internet Archive. His collaborators included Léon Bottou and Vladimir Vapnik.

## New York University

After a brief fellowship at NEC Research Institute, LeCun joined New York University in 2003. He became the Jacob T. Schwartz Professor of Computer Science and Neural Science at the Courant Institute and the Center for Neural Science. His research at NYU centered on energy-based models for supervised and unsupervised learning, feature learning for object recognition, and mobile robotics.

In 2012, he became founding director of the NYU Center for Data Science. On 9 December 2013, he was named the first director of Meta AI Research in New York City, stepping down from the NYU directorship in early 2014. In 2013, he co-founded the International Conference on Learning Representations with Yoshua Bengio, which adopted a post-publication open review process he had advocated. He also organized the annual "Learning Workshop" in Snowbird, Utah from 1986 to 2012 and served as co-director of CIFAR's Learning in Machines and Brain program.

In 2016, LeCun was a visiting professor at the Collège de France in Paris, holding the Chaire Annuelle Informatique et Sciences Numériques. In 2023, he was named the inaugural Jacob T. Schwartz Chaired Professor at NYU's Courant Institute. He also serves as a scientific advisor to Kyutai, a French research group funded by Xavier Niel, Rodolphe Saadé, Eric Schmidt, and others.

## Meta Platforms and FAIR

LeCun joined Facebook (now Meta Platforms) in 2013 as chief AI scientist, leading the company's AI research laboratory, FAIR. During his tenure, he shaped Meta's research agenda, which included advances in self-supervised learning and world models. His work at Meta contributed to the broader field of [artificial-intelligence](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/artificial-intelligence), although he has been critical of purely text-based approaches like [large language models](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/large-language-model), arguing for architectures that learn from physical world dynamics.

## AMI Labs and later ventures

On 19 November 2025, LeCun confirmed he would leave Meta after ten years to found a company focused on world-model architectures and human-like artificial intelligence, which he calls superintelligence. The resulting company, Advanced Machine Intelligence Labs (AMI Labs), is run by CEO Alex LeBrun, with LeCun as Executive Chair. AMI Labs aims to build AI systems that learn the structure and dynamics of the physical world rather than just predicting text.

In March 2026, AMI announced it had raised $1.03 billion in funding at a $3.5 billion pre-money valuation, with the round co-led by Cathay Innovation, Greycroft, Hiro Capital, HV Capital, and Bezos Expeditions. In January 2026, LeCun also became founding chair of the Technical Research Board of Logical Intelligence, an AI company developing energy-based reasoning systems.

## Honours and awards

LeCun is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the French Académie des Sciences. He has received honorary doctorates from Instituto Politécnico Nacional (2016), EPFL (2018), Université Côte d'Azur (2021), Università di Siena (2023), and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (2023).

His awards include the IEEE Neural Network Pioneer Award (2014), the PAMI Distinguished Researcher Award (2015), the IRI Medal (2018), and the Harold Pender Award (2018). In 2019, he received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. In March 2019, he won the 2018 Turing Award with Yoshua Bengio and Geoffrey Hinton. In 2022, he received the Princess of Asturias Award in the category "Scientific Research."

## Legacy and influence

LeCun's development of convolutional neural networks in the late 1980s and early 1990s laid groundwork for modern computer vision systems, from autonomous vehicles to medical imaging. His advocacy for energy-based models and world models continues to influence debates about the future of [machine-learning](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/machine-learning), particularly the limits of [generative AI](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/generative-ai) based on text prediction. His move to AMI Labs signals a shift toward embodied and physically grounded AI, a direction he has championed in contrast to scaling [transformer](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/transformer)-based language models.

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Source: https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/yan-lecun
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Last updated: 2026-09-08T17:20:48.021636+00:00