The conference, named after Meta’s Llama family of generative AI models, will take place on April 29. Meta stated that the event will showcase “the latest developments in open-source AI to help developers build groundbreaking apps and products.”
Meta has promised to reveal more details soon. Meanwhile, its annual developer conference, Meta Connect, will be held as usual in September.
In recent years, Meta has embraced an “open” approach to AI development, fostering an ecosystem around its technology. While the company has not disclosed the exact number of apps and services built on Llama, it has previously mentioned that firms like Goldman Sachs, Nomura Holdings, AT&T, DoorDash, and Accenture use the model. Additionally, Meta claims Llama has been downloaded hundreds of millions of times and is hosted by at least 25 partners, including Nvidia, Databricks, Groq, Dell, and Snowflake. Some of these partners have developed tools to enable proprietary data access and enhance model efficiency.
However, Meta is reportedly facing increasing competition from Chinese AI company DeepSeek, which has released models that rival Llama’s capabilities. According to reports, one of DeepSeek’s newer models might outperform Meta’s upcoming Llama version. In response, Meta has reportedly mobilized internal teams to study DeepSeek’s cost-effective AI deployment strategies.
Meta plans to invest up to $80 billion in AI projects this year, covering new AI hires and the construction of data centers. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced that upcoming Llama models will include “reasoning” capabilities similar to OpenAI’s o3-mini, as well as enhanced multimodal features. He also hinted at future Llama models gaining “agentic” capabilities, allowing them to perform autonomous actions.
“I believe this could be the year when Llama and open-source AI become the most advanced and widely used models,” Zuckerberg said during Meta’s Q4 2024 earnings call in January. “Our goal is for Llama to lead.”
Despite these ambitions, Meta is currently facing a lawsuit over allegations that it trained its models on copyrighted book materials without permission. Additionally, several European countries have forced the company to delay or even cancel certain model launches due to data privacy concerns.
