Yann LeCun Leaves Meta, SoftBank’s $6B Move, and the Quantum Leap Ahead

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Nov 13, 2025

Discover the thrilling shifts in AI as SoftBank exits Nvidia to fund ambitious new investments. Explore the debate over Microsoft’s ‘humanist AI’ versus the inevitability of robot labor. Yann LeCun launches a new venture focused on spatial world models and embodied AI. Tune into the competition heating up around AI coding tools, with ByteDance offering an affordable and high-performing coding assistant. Quantum computing breakthroughs also take center stage, promising exciting advancements in the field.

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INSIGHT

SoftBank’s NVIDIA Exit Is Strategic Reallocation

SoftBank sold its $6B NVIDIA stake to free capital for new AI investments rather than as a pure market-timing exit.
Masayoshi Son may re-enter NVIDIA later but needed liquidity now for Stargate and OpenAI commitments.

INSIGHT

Competing Visions: Humanist AI Vs. Robotic Labor

Microsoft publicly commits to a 'humanist AI' while Elon Musk argues robotic labor is inevitable, revealing divergent visions for AI's social role.
Beth highlights how corporate ownership changes who sets AI direction, affecting whether profit or public-interest dominates.

INSIGHT

World Models Are The Next Frontier

Yann LeCun left Meta to found a company focused on 'world models' that build spatial intelligence for 3D understanding and reasoning.
Multiple labs (World Labs, DeepMind, NVIDIA) are racing to create embodied AI that enables real-world robotics and spatial reasoning.

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Beth returned from the Create Conference 2025 to co-host with Andy, kicking off a wide-ranging episode on global AI investments, model development, and the next frontier in computing. They discussed SoftBank’s Nvidia sell-off, Microsoft’s “humanist AI” stance, Yann LeCun’s new company, OpenAI’s upcoming group chat feature, and several major breakthroughs in quantum computing.

Key Points Discussed

SoftBank Exits Nvidia – Masayoshi Son sold SoftBank’s $6B Nvidia stake to fund new OpenAI and Stargate investments. The hosts debated whether this was profit-taking or a strategic reallocation.

Microsoft’s Humanist AI Vision – Mustafa Suleyman announced Microsoft’s commitment to “humanist AI,” while Elon Musk countered that robotic labor is inevitable. Beth compared ownership structures and how control influences AI direction.

Yann LeCun Leaves Meta – Meta’s Chief AI Scientist left to launch a new company focused on world models — spatial intelligence systems designed to understand and interact with 3D environments.

World Model Race – The team discussed Fei-Fei Li’s World Labs, Google DeepMind’s Genie models, and Nvidia’s Spatial Intelligence Lab, all aiming to build next-generation embodied AI for robotics.

China’s $1.30 Coding Agent – ByteDance unveiled an AI coding assistant that rivals U.S. developer tools like Cursor, setting records on SWE-bench and handling 256K tokens per query for just $1.30 per month.

Claude Use Case Library – Anthropic launched a searchable /resources/use-cases hub to help users discover practical AI workflows from legal research to financial analysis.

11 Labs’ Iconic Voice Marketplace – 11 Labs released licensed AI recreations of historical and cultural figures like Michael Caine, Maya Angelou, and Amelia Earhart, raising questions about consent, nostalgia, and ethics in digital likeness.

Quantum Simulation Milestone – A European team simulated a 50-qubit logical quantum computer using Nvidia G200 superchips, quadrupling prior benchmarks and advancing hybrid classical-quantum computation.

Continuum’s Quantum Breakthrough – The new Helios machine converts 98 physical qubits into 48 logical ones, improving fault tolerance and paving the way for stable, room-temperature quantum systems.

Infrastructure Bottlenecks – Andy noted that the biggest constraint on AI growth isn’t chips but construction materials like sand and concrete, which are delaying new data centers.

Timestamps & Topics

00:00:00 💡 Intro and SoftBank exits Nvidia

00:04:39 🤖 Microsoft’s “humanist AI” vs. Musk’s robot inevitability

00:06:41 🧠 Yann LeCun leaves Meta to build world models

00:10:13 🌍 Fei-Fei Li’s World Labs and embodied AI

00:21:20 🇨🇳 China’s $1.30 coding agent

00:28:31 💡 Efficient training and model cost debate

00:28:50 🧩 Claude’s new use-case library

00:31:13 🎙️ 11 Labs launches iconic voice marketplace

00:39:56 ⚛️ Quantum computing breakthroughs and Helios machine

00:49:07 ⚙️ Energy, data center, and material constraints

00:51:44 🧍‍♂️ Digital twins preview for next episode

The Daily AI Show Co-Hosts: Beth Lyons and Andy Halliday