A key researcher behind Meta's video generation tools is leaving for a world model startup co-founded by Yann LeCun. Andrew Brown, a video generation researcher at Meta FAIR, announced his departure and next move: AMI Labs. He'll join the AI startup as a technical team member, working alongside co-founder and chief scientist Saining Xie.
https://twitter.com/Andrew__Brown__/status/2056238632500130029
Brown spent three years at Meta focused on video generation. According to Meta's official papers, he's a co-author of Emu Video and a core contributor to Movie Gen. Those two projects represent Meta's full stack of media generation models, from text-to-video to 1080p HD video, video editing, personalized video, and synchronized audio generation.
AMI Labs is betting on world models — AI that learns physics, motion, and causal relationships from real-world data. In March 2026, the company completed a $1.03 billion seed round at a $3.5 billion pre-money valuation. Brown's departure post also frames his new direction as "advancing the frontiers of world models."
From Emu Video and Movie Gen to AMI Labs, this move shows video generation researchers flowing into the deeper world model track. World models have gone from an academic pursuit to a startup direction attracting top researchers and billion-dollar funding.