Yann LeCun to depart Meta and launch AI startup focused on 'world models'

Pretty funny post. He won't be held responsible for any failures. Worst case scenario for this guy is he hires a bunch of people, the company folds some time later, his employees take the responsibility by getting fired, and he sails into the sunset on several yachts.

He is 65, and certainly rich enough to retire many times over. He's not doing this to scam money out of VCs. He wants to prove his ideas work.

So he's not using his own money, and he has enough personal wealth that there is no impact to him if the company fails. It's just another rich guy enjoying his toys. Good on him, I hope he has fun, but the responsibility for failure will be held by his employees, not him.

LeCun's net worth is estimated between 5-10 million.

Just for payroll of 10 AI researchers at 300k/yr would cost over $3 million per year. And his wealth probably isn't fully liquid. Given payroll + compute he would be bankrupt in a year. Of course he's not using just his own money.

However, I expect he will be a major investor. Most founders prefer to maintain some control.

He's been leading a large, important organization at Meta for 13 years. The stock has 10x'd in that time. He's almost certainly worth way more than that. Those random google sites that talk about net worth have no real idea what they're guessing at and are more akin to clickbait

Ok, great. So he'll only lose 10% of his net worth per year if it fails. Better for some VC to lose 1% of their net worth per year.

The point is, VC money for an AI venture is not chump change even for someone with a $10-$100MM net worth. The point still stands, including his own expected investment.