Final month, Meta hosted LlamaCon, its first ever generative AI convention. However whereas the occasion delivered some notable enhancements for builders, it additionally felt a bit underwhelming contemplating how necessary AI is to the corporate. Now, we all know a bit extra about why, due to a brand new report in The Wall Avenue Journal.
In line with the report, Meta had initially meant to launch its "Behemoth" Llama 4 mannequin on the April developer occasion, however later delayed its launch to June. Now, it's apparently been pushed again once more, probably till "fall or later." Meta engineers are reportedly "struggling to considerably enhance the capabilities" of the mannequin that Mark Zuckerberg has known as “the best performing base mannequin on this planet.”
Meta has already launched two smaller Llama 4 fashions, Scout and Maverick, and has additionally teased a fourth light-weight mannequin that's apparently nicknamed "Little Llama." In the meantime, the "Behemoth" mannequin can have 288 billion energetic parameters and "outperforms GPT-4.5, Claude Sonnet 3.7, and Gemini 2.0 Professional on a number of STEM benchmarks," the corporate mentioned final month.
Meta has by no means given a agency timeline of when to anticipate the mannequin. The corporate mentioned final month that it was "nonetheless coaching." And whereas Behemoth bought a number of nods throughout the LlamaCon keynote, there have been no updates on when it would really be prepared. That's most likely as a result of it may nonetheless be a number of months. Inside Meta there are apparently questions "about whether or not enhancements over prior variations are vital sufficient to justify public launch."
Meta didn't instantly reply to a request for remark. Because the report notes, it wouldn't be the primary firm to run into snags because it races to launch new fashions and outpace rivals. However the delay continues to be notable given the Meta's lofty ambitions relating to AI. Zuckerberg has made AI a high precedence with Meta planning to spend as a lot as $72 billion on its AI infrastructure this yr.
This text initially appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/metas-behemoth-llama-4-model-might-still-be-months-away-221240585.html?src=rss