Meta Launches Initiative to Encourage Startups to Use Its Llama AI Models

Meta has unveiled a new initiative aimed at encouraging startups to adopt its Llama AI model.

The program, called Llama for Startups, offers companies "direct support" from Meta's Llama team and, in some cases, financial assistance. Any company registered in the U.S., having raised less than $10 million, with at least one developer working on generative AI applications, can apply before the May 30 deadline.

"Members can receive up to $6,000 per month for up to six months to help offset the costs of building and enhancing their generative AI solutions," Meta explained in a blog post. "Our experts will work closely with them to help get started and explore advanced use cases of Llama that could benefit their startups."

The launch of the Llama Startup Program comes as Meta seeks to solidify its leadership in the competitive open-model space. Although Meta's Llama model has been downloaded over a billion times, rivals such as DeepSeek, Google, and Alibaba’s Qwen are challenging Meta's efforts to build a broad model ecosystem.

The outlook is not entirely positive as Llama has faced several setbacks in recent months.

Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that Meta postponed the release of its flagship AI model, Llama 4 Behemoth, due to concerns about subpar performance in key benchmarks. In April, Meta had to address allegations of cheating on a popular crowdsourced AI benchmark, LM Arena. The company used an "optimized conversational" version of its Llama 4 Maverick model to achieve high scores on LM Arena but released a different version publicly.

Meta holds significant ambitions for Llama and its broader generative AI portfolio. Last year, the company projected that its generative AI products would generate between $2 billion and $3 billion in revenue by 2025, potentially reaching $460 billion to $1.4 trillion by 2035.

Meta has revenue-sharing agreements with some companies hosting its Llama models. Recently, the company launched an API for customizing Llama releases. Meta AI, the company’s AI assistant based on Llama, might eventually display ads and offer a subscription service with additional features, CEO Mark Zuckerberg mentioned during the company's first-quarter earnings call. These products come with substantial development costs.

In 2024, Meta's "GenAI" budget exceeded $900 million and could surpass $1 billion this year. This figure excludes the infrastructure needed to run and train the models. Meta previously stated it plans to spend between $60 billion and $80 billion on capital expenditures in 2025, primarily for new data centers.