Meta Partners with Microsoft to Unveil "Llama 2," Shifting to a Commercially Usable Open Model
On July 18, 2023, Meta announced its next-generation model “Llama 2” in partnership with Microsoft. Whereas the original LLaMA the previous year had been restricted to research use under a non-commercial license, this release shifted to a license allowing free commercial use as well — a turning point marking Meta’s full commitment to an “open AI” strategy.
Details
- License shift: A reversal from the research-only restrictions of the original, now allowing free use for both research and commercial purposes (with a special-permission requirement for very large companies with over 700 million monthly active users)
- Three sizes: Released in 7B, 13B, and 70B parameter versions, pretrained on 2 trillion tokens — roughly double the original — with a doubled context length as well
- Partnership with Microsoft: Named Microsoft its preferred partner for Llama 2, with availability on the Azure AI model catalog starting the same day as the announcement, alongside plans for further optimization on Windows
- Distribution channels: Available not only via Azure but also through AWS, Hugging Face, and other platforms
- Chat-tuned version: Alongside the base model, a chat-tuned version, “Llama 2-Chat,” was released simultaneously
What happened next
This decision to offer a free commercial license went on to shape the standard business model for open-weight LLMs going forward. Llama 2 became the foundation for a huge number of derivative models and research projects, leading directly into “Llama 3” in April 2024.