Meta defers release of its ‘Behemoth’ AI model

Meta Platforms is delaying the release of its flagship “Behemoth” AI model owing to concerns about its capabilities. Company engineers are struggling to significantly improve the capabilities of its Behemoth large-language model, resulting in staff questions about whether improvements over earlier versions are significant enough to justify public release.

Behemoth was internally scheduled for release in April to coincide with Meta’s inaugural AI conference for developers, LlamaCon, but it was delayed until June before this latest delay, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal on Thursday.

Why the delay?

Meta released Llama 4 in April. Llama -- Large Language Model Meta AI -- is Meta's family of LLMs. But Meta AI engineers are concerned the capabilities in the Behemoth LLM aren't a significant enough improvement over what's already available via Llama 4 to warrant a June release, according to the Journal, which cites unnamed sources within Meta.

Behemoth is "one of the smartest LLMs in the world and our most powerful yet to serve as a teacher for our new models," Meta said in April.

The tech giant aims to become one of the world's biggest AI providers and has already woven AI into how people interact on many of its apps across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, including helping with writing posts and captions and editing your images. Meta also released a standalone app for Meta AI at the end of April, which includes a hub for its Ray-Ban smart glasses.