Meta’s Llama AI models have reached 1 billion downloads, according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement on Threads. Kyle Wiggers reports that this represents a 53% increase from the 650 million downloads recorded in December 2024. The models, available under a proprietary license, power Meta’s AI assistant across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Despite commercial restrictions in the license, companies like Spotify and DoorDash use Llama in production. Meta faces challenges including copyright lawsuits and performance issues compared to competitors like DeepSeek. The company plans to invest up to $80 billion in AI projects this year and will launch new Llama models with reasoning and multimodal capabilities in the coming months. Meta’s first generative AI developer conference, LlamaCon, is scheduled for April 29.