Meta has delayed the rollout of its flagship artificial intelligence model, Behemoth, amid concerns over its performance. The company had initially planned to release Behemoth in April, later pushed the release date to June, and has now delayed the launch until at least fall, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal citing unnamed sources.
The delays are attributed to struggles in improving the AI model and concerns that its performance may not live up to the standards promoted in public statements. Meta has previously claimed that Behemoth outperforms similar models from Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI on certain tests.
In a press release on April 5, Meta previewed Llama 4 Behemoth, describing it as “one of the smartest LLMs in the world and our most powerful yet to serve as a teacher for our new models.” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated during a first-quarter earnings call on April 30 that the company would increase its spending on AI data centers this year as it embeds the technology more deeply throughout its family of apps.
Meta’s open-source AI models, Llama 4 Scout and Llama 4 Maverick, released on April 5, are seen as a challenge to rivals’ more expensive closed models and are good news for businesses looking to lower their AI deployment costs.
Meta’s AI Ambitions
The company’s plans to record $64 billion to $72 billion in capital expenditures, up from $60 billion to $65 billion, are aimed at meeting the demand for computing resources. Zuckerberg emphasized that AI is transforming everything the company does and that the opportunities ahead are staggering.
As Meta continues to develop its AI capabilities, the delay in Behemoth’s release highlights the challenges the company faces in delivering on its ambitious AI plans.
