Meta recently announced the launch of a new program called the "Llama Startup Program," aimed at encouraging startups to adopt its Llama AI model. The initiative provides participating companies with "direct support" and, in some cases, financial assistance. Any company registered in the U.S., with less than $10 million in funding, at least one developer, and developing generative AI applications can apply to participate by May 30.
According to Meta's blog post, companies involved in the program can receive up to $6,000 per month for a maximum duration of six months. These funds will help startup companies offset costs incurred during the development and enhancement of their generative AI solutions. Additionally, Meta's expert team will work closely with these enterprises to help them get started and explore advanced use cases of the Llama model, thereby supporting the growth of startups.
The launch of the Llama Startup Program comes as Meta is striving to solidify its leadership position in the fiercely competitive open model market. Although Meta’s Llama model has already been downloaded more than one billion times, it faces threats from competitors like DeepSeek, Google, and Alibaba’s Qwen, which could challenge Meta’s market position.
However, Llama has also faced some setbacks over the past few months. Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that Meta postponed the release of its flagship AI model, Llama4Behemoth, due to poor performance on key benchmark tests. Moreover, Meta had to address allegations that it cheated in the popular crowdsourced AI benchmark test LM Arena. Meta used an "optimized for dialogue" version of Llama4Maverick to score highly in LM Arena, but the publicly released version was different.
Despite these challenges, Meta remains ambitious about Llama and its broader generative AI products. Last year, Meta predicted that its generative AI products would generate between $2 billion and $3 billion in revenue by 2025, with that figure expected to rise to between $460 billion and $1.4 trillion by 2035.
Meta has signed revenue-sharing agreements with some companies hosting its Llama models and recently launched an API for customizing versions of Llama. Additionally, Meta's AI assistant, Meta AI, may display ads and offer subscription services with additional features in the future, according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg in the company's first-quarter earnings call.
The development of these products is quite costly. In 2024, Meta's budget for "generative AI" exceeded $900 million, and this year it may exceed $1 billion, not including the infrastructure needed to run and train the models. Meta previously stated that it plans to spend between $60 billion and $80 billion on capital expenditures in 2025, mainly for the construction of new data centers.
Key points:
🌟 Meta launches the "Llama Startup Program" to support startups using its AI models.
💰 Participating companies can receive up to $6,000 per month for a maximum of six months.
📈 Meta aims to consolidate its leadership position in the generative AI market despite competition challenges.