Despite a massive $1.03B capitalization, AMI Labs employs very few researchers who meet the strict 'senior' criteria from the target big-three labs. The current verifiable baseline rests on only two to three clear cases, including Sanghyun Woo and Li Jing 2 sources, while other co-founders have ambiguous prior titles 2 sources. A critical structural limiter is that Meta alumni—including Yann LeCun and the core leadership—explicitly do not count toward this threshold 2 sources. Furthermore, AMI’s contrarian JEPA architecture, Paris headquarters, and a deliberate, lean research strategy naturally restrict pulling power and limit massive poaching from Bay Area LLM hubs and incumbents nextomoro.com. While their substantial war chest allows them to target Google DeepMind's European hubs techcrunch.com, strict criteria keep numbers heavily depressed. The median of 5 represents the baseline plus a handful of strategic hires, accounting for intense local competition .