Meta’s chief AI scientist maps his exit

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. The strain between Meta’s AI old guard and its flashy latest hires has been rippling through the corporate, but a coming departure may cause the largest wave yet.

AI pioneer and Chief Scientist Yann LeCun is reportedly planning to go away for his own world models startup, turning the corporate’s internal battle right into a real-world test of competing visions for AI’s future.

In today’s AI rundown:

• Meta’s Chief AI Scientist plans to exit

• ElevenLabs’ celeb AI voice licensing platform

• Use AI as a private tutor to learn anything

• SoftBank cuts Nvidia shares to go ‘all-in’ on OpenAI

• 4 latest AI tools, community workflows, and more

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

META

🚪 Meta’s Chief AI Scientist plans to exit

The Rundown: Longtime Meta Chief AI Scientist and Turing Award winner Yann LeCun is reportedly planning to go away the corporate, with fundraising talks and plans already underway to launch his own startup based around developing world models.

The small print:

• In accordance with FT, LeCun has told colleagues he plans to go away Meta in the approaching months, ending his run leading the corporate’s FAIR arm since 2013.

• LeCun’s upcoming enterprise will reportedly give attention to world models that learn from video and spatial data quite than text-based systems.

• LeCun began reporting to Alexandr Wang as a part of Meta’s massive AI restructure, with friction this summer between FAIR and the brand new direction.

• Meta recently cut around 600 positions from its AI divisions, which included FAIR but not the recently formed TBD Lab overseen by Wang.

Why it matters: This coming departure is… not a surprise. There was tension between Meta’s old guard and latest hires throughout the reorg, and LeCun’s AI critiques are always at odds with Meta’s latest AI direction. Time will tell if the upcoming enterprise ultimately proves him right or if the high-profile talent proves its value as a substitute.

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ELEVENLABS

⭐️ ElevenLabs’ celeb AI voice licensing platform

The Rundown: ElevenLabs just debuted its Iconic Voice Marketplace, connecting brands with AI-replicated celebrity voices through rights-holder agreements, featuring 28 licensed options spanning actors, historical figures, athletes, and more.

The small print:

• The platform brokers licensing deals between corporations and estates or living celebrities, with ElevenLabs synthesizing the approved voice content.

• Living celebrities available on the platform include actor Michael Caine, joining actress Liza Minnelli and musicians Art Garfunkel and Michael Feinstein.

• Deceased figures like Maya Angelou, Babe Ruth, Alan Turing, and Mark Twain were recreated from archived recordings via estate partnerships.

• The corporate also announced that actor Matthew McConaughey (an investor in ElevenLabs) is using the tech to voice his newsletter for Spanish readers.

Why it matters: A ‘Cameo’ platform for AI voices (and eventually full likenesses) has felt like an inevitability — and while a lot of the library is historical, it’s a primary step right into a weird world of ‘cloned’ IP. With AI image/video apps (taking a look at you, Sora) muddying the waters, ElevenLabs could offer an ethical option for each brands and celebrities.

AI TRAINING

👨🏻‍🏫 Use AI as a private tutor to learn anything

The Rundown: On this tutorial, you’ll learn how you can use ChatGPT’s Study and Learn mode to get tutoring-style guidance that breaks problems into steps, checks your reasoning, and adapts to your level as a substitute of just providing you with answers.

Step-by-step:

1. In ChatGPT, click the “+” icon on the chat composer, select “More,” then activate “Study and learn” mode

2. Describe your learning goal (e.g., “Teach me how you can program in Python” or “Help me solve this finance problem”)

3. Answer context questions the AI asks, then follow the step-by-step guidance because it nudges you toward solutions quite than providing direct answers

4. Use for comprehensive understanding and problem-solving skills; switch to Regular mode for quick facts or content generation

Pro tip: For creating study guides and quick quizzes, you too can try NotebookLM.

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SOFTBANK, NVIDIA, & OPENAI

💰 SoftBank cuts Nvidia shares to go ‘all-in’ on OpenAI

The Rundown: SoftBank Group sold its complete $5.8B Nvidia position to finance a wave of AI infrastructure investments with OpenAI, with CEO Masayoshi Son declaring the corporate “all in” on the AI leader despite growing questions on AI capital returns.

The small print:

• The Nvidia sale marks SoftBank’s second complete exit from the chipmaker, after selling a $4B stake in 2019 for shares now valued above $150B.

• Son revealed that pre-2019, CEO Sam Altman asked him to take a position $10B, but Microsoft ultimately won the deal and have become the exclusive computing partner.

• The CEO believes “OpenAI can be listed eventually… and can develop into the most beneficial company on the planet,” driving SoftBank’s $33.2B planned investment.

• Son’s concentrated approach has produced each big wins (like Alibaba’s $20M investment to $150B) and catastrophic losses, including $11.5B on WeWork.

Why it matters: Masayoshi Son isn’t any stranger to creating massive generational investments, and this time he’s putting his chips on the AI leader — and pulling them off of the AI chipmaking king. But OAI will still be buying Nvidia’s chips to power its massive compute needs, so the circular AI ball of cash continues to grow regardless.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

• 🧠 ScreenPlay – Smart agents that think, adapt, and automate anything your old bots couldn’t handle*

• 💬 Scribe v2 Realtime – ElevenLabs’ 150ms latency speech transcription AI

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• 🗣️ Meta Omnilingual ASR – Automatic speech recognition for 1,600 languages

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📰 The whole lot else in AI today

OpenAI lost a Munich copyright case, with the court ruling ChatGPT illegally trained on songs and the German music rights society calling it Europe’s “first landmark AI ruling”.

ElevenLabs launched Scribe v2 Realtime, a transcription model that tops accuracy benchmarks and allows live agents to utilize real-time understanding in 90 languages.

The Wikimedia Foundation posted a brand new blog calling out Wikipedia’s importance as a source for AI training, pushing AI developers for “attribution and financial support”.

Samsung unveiled its Vision AI Companion across its 2025 TV lineup, integrating an upgraded Bixby assistant with Copilot and Perplexity for conversational chat, and more.

Wall Street lender Blue Owl Capital is investing $3B right into a Recent Mexico data center for OpenAI’s Stargate, with banks set to fund a further $18B for the 4.5GW facility.

Google introduced Private AI Compute, a cloud-based AI processing platform that uses Gemini models with hardware-secured isolation to maintain user data private.

COMMUNITY

🤝 Community AI workflows

Every newsletter, we showcase how a reader is using AI to work smarter, save time, or make life easier.

Today’s workflow comes from reader Jeff L. in San Francisco, CA:

“I created a Gemini Gem called “AIML Tutor” to assist me get up to the mark in AI/ML. It’s instructed to supply answers at a beginner level and increase in complexity as I prove to have grasped concepts. I asked it to make use of metaphors since I’ve found that is the easiest way for ideas to follow me. I take advantage of all of it day to clarify concepts and have also used it to create learning plans with links to external materials like YouTube videos.”

How do you employ AI? Tell us here.

🎓 Highlights: News, Guides & Events

• Read our last AI newsletter: AI ‘godmother’ calls for spatial intelligence

• Read our last Tech newsletter: Musk wins $1T pay package

• Read our last Robotics newsletter: Apple’s $133B humanoid moonshot

• Today’s AI tool guide: Use AI as a private tutor to learn anything

• RSVP to next workshop @ 1PM Friday: AI Essentials for Leaders & Managers

See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, Shubham, and Jennifer — the humans behind The Rundown