Meta’s chief Mark Zuckerberg recently confirmed AIM’s prediction of the company releasing Llama 4 early next year at its third quarterly earnings call.
“I expect that the smaller Llama 4 models will be ready first, and we expect [them] sometime early next year, and I think that they’re going to be a big deal on several fronts — new modalities, capabilities, stronger reasoning, and much faster,” said Zuckerberg.
Meta announced its Q3 2024 results on October 30, where the company posted strong operational and financial results. Total revenue surged 19% to $40.59 with expenses climbing 14% to $23.24 billion.
Llama Rules
As per Zuckerberg, the Llama 3 models marked a major turning point in the industry, but he expressed even greater enthusiasm for Llama 4, which he confirmed is well into development. “We’re training the Llama 4 models on a cluster that is bigger than 100k H100s or bigger than anything that I’ve seen reported for what others are doing,” he said.
At the recent Meta’s Build with AI Summit, in Bengaluru, Meta’s VP of product, Ragavan Srinivasan, hinted at releasing “next gen” Llama models by 2025, with native integrations, extended memory and context capabilities, cross-modality support, and expanded third-party collaborations, while advancing memory-based applications for coding and leveraging deep hardware partnerships.
Zuckerberg also mentioned that the latest Llama 3.2 model, known for its small, on-device capabilities and multimodal functionality, saw extensive adoption, not only by enterprises but also by the public sector, particularly in the U.S. government.
Meta’s growth was partly driven by increased advertiser demand for Meta’s AI-driven advertising solutions, which leverage generative AI tools that have shown promising results.
Over one million advertisers utilised Meta’s generative AI tools last month, creating more than 15 million ads. Businesses that implemented AI-driven image generation reported a remarkable 7% increase in conversions.
“Improvements to our AI-driven feed and video recommendations have led to an 8% increase in time spent on Facebook and a 6% increase on Instagram this year alone,” Zuckerberg noted, showcasing the tangible impact of AI on user engagement.
Over one million advertisers leveraged Meta’s generative AI tools for ad creation, which led to a 7% boost in conversion rates for businesses using image generation features.
“We had a good quarter driven by AI progress across our apps and business,” said Zuckerberg. “We also have strong momentum with Meta AI, Llama adoption, and AI-powered glasses.”As Meta continues to refine its AI offerings and enhance its infrastructure, Zuckerberg emphasised the company’s intent to explore new business opportunities driven by these advancements. “There are a lot of new opportunities to use new AI advances to accelerate our core business that should have strong ROI over the next few years,” he stated.
