Meta’s Days of Giving Away AI for Free Are Numbered
Expect Mark Zuckerberg to pivot toward monetizing his huge investment in software and researchers.
Mark Zuckerberg will probably seek to monetize his huge investment in AI.
Photographer: Vincent Feuray/AFP/Getty Images
Like any good investor Mark Zuckerberg likes to make a return, but he’s willing to play the long game. It took a decade from spending $19 billion on WhatsApp before he finally put ads on the messaging app. Now, as he invests $65 billion this year on artificial-intelligence infrastructure and stokes a talent war to hire the field’s brightest minds, expect him to monetize that endeavor too by pivoting away from the free AI project that has left Wall Street scratching its head.
Llama is the flagship AI model Meta Platforms Inc. built to catch up with ChatGPT. Unlike those made by Alphabet Inc.’s Google and OpenAI, it’s billed as “open source,” meaning its blueprints are plastered on the internet for anyone — including his competitors — to copy and build upon. Why? Zuckerberg has said it’s to make AI accessible, so that “everyone in the world benefits” — a line I didn’t buy from the guy who built his empire on harvesting user data to sell to advertisers.