Yann LeCun’s second attempt at a VC fund lands with $100M and Gemini’s co-lead as a partner

TL;DR

LeCun and Oriol Vinyals join 224 Ventures, a new AI fund with $100M+ in assets. Targets early stage AI with $1M-$5M checks. University of Illinois is anchor investor. LPs are mostly AI insiders.

Yann LeCun has found a VC fund that will actually launch. The Meta former chief AI scientist is joining 224 Ventures, a new firm that announced Wednesday with more than $100 million in assets under management. His co-partner is Oriol Vinyals, who until today served as Gemini’s co-technical lead at Google DeepMind. Shaun Johnson, who co-founded AI-focused firm AIX Ventures, will run the firm.

The timing is hard to miss. Vinyals announced his departure from DeepMind today alongside Jeff Dean, Sanjay Ghemawat, and Quoc Le, all four leaving to co-found Discovery Loop, a startup aimed at automating science and engineering. He is now simultaneously launching a startup and joining a venture fund, with 224 Ventures serving as his formal investing vehicle.

The fund is targeting $81 million for its core early stage vehicle, with about $30 million raised so far. It has also invested more than $60 million in growth-stage AI companies through special-purpose vehicles. Once the early stage fund closes, total assets should reach at least $150 million, according to Johnson. The University of Illinois is the anchor investor.

224 Ventures will write checks between $1 million and $5 million, targeting startups valued under $100 million. It will not lead rounds. The focus is early stage AI applications, especially research talent building capital-efficient models. Robotics and AI infrastructure are also on the list. The firm has already made multiple undisclosed investments.

LeCun and Vinyals were already active angel investors. Both backed Perplexity before it became one of the most talked-about AI startups. LeCun also invested in Groq, which Nvidia later acquired in a $20 billion licensing and talent deal. Johnson invested in Perplexity and voice tech maker Wispr AI through AIX Ventures before departing that firm in December.

The fund’s investor base is unusual. The majority of its limited partners are individuals working in AI, including researchers at frontier labs, startup founders, and Fortune 500 leaders. That network is the pitch: deal flow and portfolio support from people who build AI, not just fund it. LeCun’s last VC venture, Extelligence Invest, collapsed within eight hours in July over undisclosed “exclusive relationships” with other funds. He called that episode a miscommunication at the time. 224 Ventures appears to have resolved whatever the conflict was.

LeCun will retain his role as executive chairman of AMI Labs, the world-models startup he raised $1 billion for in March. He described 224 Ventures as a way to pool resources with Vinyals and support founders while staying on top of new AI developments. All three partners will invest exclusively through the firm, vote on investments together, and split any profits equally.

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