Court filing reveals Meta gets revenue from Llama model hosts
What's the story
Meta, the tech giant led by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, has been discovered to have revenue-sharing agreements with hosts of its Llama AI models.
The revelation comes from a court filing in the copyright lawsuit Kadrey v. Meta.
The lawsuit alleges Meta trained its Llama models on hundreds of terabytes of pirated e-books.
Despite previously claiming "selling access" isn't part of its business model, the company is reportedly sharing a portion of the revenue generated by companies hosting its Llama models.
Partner companies
Potential revenue-sharing partners identified
While the court filing doesn't mention which hosts are paying Meta, the company has previously named several Llama host partners in its blog posts.
These include AWS, NVIDIA, Databricks, Groq, Dell, Azure, Google Cloud, and Snowflake.
Developers can either use a Llama model via a host partner or download and run it on different hardware systems.
However, many hosts provide additional services to get Llama models up and running easier and better.
Monetization plans
Zuckerberg discusses potential monetization strategies for Llama models
During an April earnings call last year, Zuckerberg spoke about licensing access to Llama models and other monetization strategies like business messaging services and ads in "AI interactions."
He said if companies like Microsoft or Amazon were reselling these services, Meta should get a cut of the revenue.
"So those are the deals that we intend to be making," he added.
Model usage
Strategy for Llama models and AI research community
Zuckerberg also stressed that most of the value from Llama is from the improvements made by the AI research community.
Meta leverages these models to power a number of products across its platforms, including its AI assistant, Meta AI.
"I think it's good business for us to do this in an open way," Zuckerberg said during Meta's Q3 2024 earnings call.
He believes this approach makes their products better instead of working in isolation without industry standardization.
Future investments
Future plans and potential subscription service
Responding to allegations in Kadrey v. Meta that the company used pirated works to develop Llama, plaintiffs allege Meta facilitated infringement by uploading these works.
To offset costs, Meta is reportedly considering launching subscription service for its AI assistant with additional capabilities.
The company plans to significantly raise its capital expenditures this year due to rising investments in AI.
In January, it announced plans to spend $60-80 billion on CapEx in 2025—approximately double of what it spent in 2024.