Artificial intelligence pioneer Yann LeCun said Wednesday he will be leaving his job as Meta's chief AI scientist at the end of the year.

LeCun said he will be forming a startup company to pursue research on advanced forms of AI that can “understand the physical world, have persistent memory, can reason, and can plan complex action sequences.”

His announcement, after more than a week of rumors, comes after Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, began cutting roughly 600 AI jobs this fall.

LeCun said in a social media post that Meta will partner with the new startup and that some of the research will overlap with Meta's commercial interests and some of it will not.

Meta didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

LeCun joined Facebook in 2013 a

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