Meta Launches Llama 4 Series of AI Models, Including Scout, Maverick, and Behemoth

Meta has officially launched Llama 4, its latest series of AI models, on April 5, 2025. This release includes four models: Scout, Maverick, Behemoth, and L4emoth.

Meta has unveiled its latest series of AI models, Llama 4, in a move that signals the company's persistence in the competitive landscape of large language models (LLMs).

This release, which follows the previous iteration launched in 2024, includes four models: Scout, Maverick, Behemoth, and L4emoth.

Each model is designed with a focus on multimodal capabilities and computational efficiency, leveraging a mixture-of-experts (MoE) architecture.

The MoE approach allows the models to divide tasks into subtasks handled by specialized "expert" components, enhancing performance while reducing computational costs.

Scout and Maverick are currently available through Meta's platforms and partners like Hugging Face, while Behemoth remains in training.

Scout operates with 109 billion total parameters and excels in processing long-context documents with a context window of up to 10 million tokens. Maverick, boasting 400 billion parameters, is optimized for general assistant applications, including creative writing and multilingual tasks.

Once released, Behemoth is expected to be the company's most powerful model yet, targeting more specialized STEM-related applications. L4emoth, an even larger model with 568 billion parameters, is designed for extreme efficiency, performing tasks with minimal computational resources.

Llama 4 models are trained on a massive dataset of text and code in multiple programming languages. They can perform various tasks, including

* Translation

* Writing different kinds of creative content

* Answering questions in an informative way

* Following instructions and completing requests thoughtfully

* Coding in multiple programming languages

Despite impressive capabilities, the models still lag behind advanced offerings from Google and Anthropic in certain areas like reasoning.

"We are continuing to work on improving our models' reasoning abilities and expect to share more updates on that front in the coming months," a Meta spokesperson stated.

This launch marks the beginning of a new phase for the Llama ecosystem.

* The models will be supported by a vibrant community of researchers and developers on the Llama GitHub repository.

* The company also plans to release more smaller derivative models from Llama 4 to encourage experimentation and innovation.

* Furthermore, Meta hopes to expand the availability of Llama 4's multimodal features to more users and regions in the future.

This move comes as Big Tech companies face increasing pressure to balance technological advancement with ethical and legal considerations, especially regarding data privacy and the potential misuse of AI.

In Europe, for instance, Meta's ability to deploy models like Llama 4 is subject to licensing restrictions due to EU regulations. Additionally, companies with over 700 million monthly active users require special licenses to operate in the region.

Llama 4 represents Meta's response to escalating competition in the LLM domain. While internal benchmarks suggest improvements over some competitors in specific tasks, the models still lag behind advanced offerings from Google and Anthropic in certain areas like reasoning.

"We are continuing to work on improving our models' reasoning abilities and expect to share more updates on that front in the coming months," a Meta spokesperson noted.

This launch marks the beginning of a new phase for the Llama ecosystem. The models will be supported by a vibrant community of researchers and developers on the Llama GitHub repository.

The company also plans to release more smaller derivative models from Llama 4 to encourage experimentation and innovation.

Furthermore, Meta hopes to expand the availability of Llama 4's multimodal features to more users and regions in the future.

This move comes as Big Tech companies face increasing pressure to balance technological advancement with ethical and legal considerations, especially regarding data privacy and the potential misuse of AI.

In Europe, for instance, Meta's ability to deploy models like Llama 4 is subject to licensing restrictions due to EU regulations. Additionally, companies with over 700 million monthly active users require special licenses to operate in the region.