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

TL;DRLeCun 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.