Global IT company Meta has announced its plans to support startups leveraging generative artificial intelligence (AI) technology. Meta recently launched the “Llama Startup Program” targeting early-stage startups in the United States and stated that it will support the development of AI services using the Llama model.
The program is part of Meta’s strategy to expand the use of its open-source AI model series, “Llama.” Meta plans to provide up to 6,000 USD per month, totaling up to 36,000 USD over six months, to startups meeting certain criteria in the form of reimbursable development costs. Eligible startups must be based in the United States, have raised less than 10 million USD in funding, and have at least one developer on their team.
Participating companies will receive direct technical support from Meta’s AI model development team and explore various uses of the Llama model together. Meta expects this will help verify the Llama model’s performance across diverse industries and expand the developer and enterprise ecosystem.
The “Llama 4 Maverick,” available to supported companies, is Meta’s newly released high-performance model, capable of processing both images and text simultaneously with multimodal functions and understanding long contexts up to 1 million tokens. It is well-suited for developing generative AI services dealing with large-scale data.
Although the program operates primarily in the U.S. market, such initiatives by global big tech companies provide insights for domestic startups as well. Meta is running region-specific startup support programs in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, suggesting the possibility of similar opportunities for Korean companies in the future.
To secure a leadership position in the open-source model ecosystem within the generative AI field, Meta is aggressively investing. According to recent quarterly announcements, Meta plans to commit up to 80 billion USD in capital expenditures for AI infrastructure by 2025, with a significant portion allocated to AI model training and service deployment.
The first deadline for the startup support program is May 30 (Pacific Time in the U.S.). Meta plans to select supported companies thereafter to begin technology validation and market expansion.