Meta is trying to win the AI race. A new partnership with AWS could help

CNN

2 days ago

For Silicon Valley giants, getting ahead in the artificial intelligence race requires more than building the biggest, most capable models; they're also competing to get third-party developers to build new applications based on their technology.
Now, Meta is teaming up with Amazon's cloud computing unit, Amazon Web Services, on an initiative designed to do just that.
The program will provide six months of technical support from both companies' engineers and $200,000 in AWS cloud computing credits each to 30 US startups looking to build AI tools on Meta's Llama AI model. The partnership is set to be unveiled at AWS Summit in New York City on Wednesday.
For Meta, the project could be a boost at a time when CEO Mark Zuckerberg is pouring enormous resources into his ambition to become a top player in the AI space. The company last month announced the creation of a new AI super intelligence team, after recruiting leading researchers away from competitors with massive pay packages. Meta also invested $14.3 billion into AI startup Scale, which included the hiring of its founder and CEO, Alexandr Wang, and several other top employees.
And Amazon's investment, worth more than $6 million in total, could pay off if the startups continue using AWS's service to access the AI system after the six months. While Amazon has its own large language models, AWS's AI strategy has been to help companies access any model — or multiple — along with the intense computing power needed to run them.
Early-stage startups can apply to the program and will be selected later this summer based on the 'potential impact of the proposed solutions and the technical ability' of their teams, AWS and Meta said in a statement.
'We have a long-standing relationship and partnership with Meta, and what we're aiming to do here with the Llama collaboration is really empower founders to build transformative AI using Llama models,' AWS Vice President and Global Head of Startups and Venture Capital Jon Jones told CNN exclusively ahead of the announcement.
He added that AWS customers are already using Llama to, for example, create AI customer relationship management tools for auto dealerships or financial technology tools.
At the heart of the Meta-AWS partnership is a push to support Llama, a leading open-source AI model, meaning the code behind the technology is publicly available — unlike proprietary or 'closed-source' models like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Anthropic's Claude.
There's an industry debate over the benefits of open versus closed-source AI models. It goes something like this: Companies on Team Closed Source say they'll retain more control over how their technology is used, and it's a whole lot easier to build a business when your rivals don't know exactly how your systems work. Team Open Source says potentially transformative AI technology should be available for anyone to use and build on to democratize its benefits.
Zuckerberg said last year that he believes 'open source is necessary for a positive AI future.' He added that his model will help open source become 'the industry standard,' since third parties have free access to build on the technology.
In other words, Zuckerberg would like his technology to become the leading platform for developers building chatbots, agents and other AI apps, similar to how Apple and Google's operating systems have functioned in the mobile web era.
But for startups looking to build on a large AI model, going the closed-source route can have practical benefits — when they pay to access the technology, they may also get a friendly user interface, tech support and a more personalized experience.
With their partnership, AWS and Meta hope to provide some of those same benefits to startups building on Llama. And given the significant cost of computing power for AI systems, the AWS credits could be a boon to startups that don't expect to turn a profit immediately.
'We developed Llama because we believe greater access to powerful models is essential for driving progress in AI,' Ash Jhaveri, vice president of AI partnerships at Meta, said in a statement about the initiative. 'Startups are some of the most creative forces in tech, and we're looking forward to seeing how they'll use Llama to push boundaries, explore new frontiers, and shape the future of AI in bold and unexpected ways.'