Meta's 'Behemoth' Llama 4 model might still be months away

Last month, Meta hosted LlamaCon, its archetypal ever generative AI conference. But portion the lawsuit delivered immoderate notable improvements for developers, it besides felt a spot underwhelming considering however important AI is to the company. Now, we cognize a spot much astir why, acknowledgment to a new report successful The Wall Street Journal.

According to the report, Meta had primitively intended to merchandise its "Behemoth" Llama 4 exemplary astatine the April developer event, but aboriginal delayed its merchandise to June. Now, it's seemingly been pushed backmost again, perchance until "fall oregon later." Meta engineers are reportedly "struggling to importantly amended the capabilities" of the exemplary that Mark Zuckerberg has called “the highest performing basal exemplary successful the world.”

Meta has already released 2 smaller Llama 4 models, Scout and Maverick, and has besides teased a 4th lightweight exemplary that's seemingly nicknamed "Little Llama." Meanwhile, the "Behemoth" exemplary volition person 288 cardinal progressive parameters and "outperforms GPT-4.5, Claude Sonnet 3.7, and Gemini 2.0 Pro connected respective STEM benchmarks," the institution said last month.

Meta has ne'er fixed a steadfast timeline of erstwhile to expect the model. The institution said past period that it was "still training." And portion Behemoth got a fewer nods during the LlamaCon keynote, determination were nary updates connected erstwhile it mightiness really beryllium ready. That's astir apt due to the fact that it could inactive beryllium respective months. Inside Meta determination are seemingly questions "about whether improvements implicit anterior versions are important capable to warrant nationalist release."

Meta didn't instantly respond to a petition for comment. As the study notes, it wouldn't beryllium the archetypal institution to tally into snags arsenic it races to merchandise caller models and outpace competitors. But the hold is inactive notable fixed the Meta's lofty ambitions erstwhile it comes to AI. Zuckerberg has made AI a apical priority with Meta readying to walk arsenic overmuch arsenic $72 billion connected its AI infrastructure this year.