On April 5, 2025, Meta introduced something pretty exciting: Llama 4. This new series of AI models is all about boosting multimodal capabilities and making things more efficient. Let me walk you through what this means and why it matters.
The lineup includes four unique models: Scout, Maverick, Behemoth, and L4emoth. Each of these models uses a smart mixture-of-experts (MoE) architecture. In simple terms, MoE helps the models break down tasks into smaller, specialized parts, which makes everything run smoother and cheaper.
Right now, you can access Scout and Maverick through Meta’s platforms and partners like Hugging Face. Behemoth, though, is still in the training phase. Scout, with its 109 billion parameters, is great for handling long documents, offering a context window of up to 10 million tokens. On the other hand, Maverick, boasting 400 billion parameters, is your go-to for general assistance, creative writing, and multilingual tasks. Once Behemoth is ready, it’s expected to be Meta’s powerhouse, focusing on STEM applications.
Meta is also integrating Llama 4 into its AI assistants on WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram across 40 countries. However, due to EU regulations, the multimodal features are currently limited to English-speaking users in the U.S. This is because companies with over 700 million monthly active users need special licenses there.
This rollout is a strategic move by Meta to stay ahead of the competition from big names like OpenAI and China’s DeepSeek. While internal tests show some improvements over rivals, there’s still room to grow, especially in areas like reasoning, where Google and Anthropic are leading.
Meta sees this launch as a new chapter for the Llama ecosystem, reinforcing its commitment to advancing open-source AI despite regulatory and competitive hurdles.
