--- title: "How Meta Won Open Source AI, Then Threw It Away" url: https://daily.dev/posts/how-meta-won-open-source-ai-then-threw-it-away-9xiv94b13 source_url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ddjy1nlOWA type: video:youtube source: "Coding with Lewis" published: 2026-05-15T15:06:58.354Z updated: 2026-05-15T15:07:21.032Z tags: ["open-source", "llm", "llama"] reading_time: 24 upvotes: 38 comments: 3 language: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # How Meta Won Open Source AI, Then Threw It Away **[Coding with Lewis](https://daily.dev/sources/codingwithlewis)** · 24 min read · 38 upvotes · 3 comments ## Summary Meta's rise and fall as the champion of open-source AI is traced through the Llama model series. Starting with the surprise 2023 Llama release that democratized access to frontier AI, Meta built enormous developer trust through Llama 2 and 3. But the Llama 4 launch in April 2025 unraveled that trust: Meta submitted a specially tuned, unreleased model to public leaderboards, skipped the technical paper that accompanied every prior release, and published benchmark claims that independent testing couldn't replicate. The fallout included the sidelining of the entire GenAI team, the departure of Turing Award winner Yann LeCun, a $14.3B investment in Scale AI, and the hiring of Alexander Wang as Chief AI Officer. LeCun later confirmed benchmarks were manipulated and attributed the failure to prioritizing safe, deadline-driven choices over genuine research. Meanwhile, DeepSeek, Alibaba, and Mistral have emerged as credible alternatives, and Meta's flagship Behemoth model still hasn't shipped. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Community discussion Top comments from developers on daily.dev. **@grantkennedy** · 3 upvotes > Never, ever trust Meta. They are not benevolent. They are evil. Anything they do is always in their own selfish interest - externalities be damned. **@deepjoshi\_dev** · 0 upvotes > In the end it's all about visibility and profit. ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Open-source leaders question whether Meta’s Alexandr Wang will truly give away its AI models](https://daily.dev/posts/open-source-leaders-question-whether-meta-s-alexandr-wang-will-truly-give-away-its-ai-models-5mhgxkrao) · The New Stack · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Meta might charge for a future AI model](https://daily.dev/posts/meta-might-charge-for-a-future-ai-model-w7nhnptsc) · The Verge · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#open-source](https://daily.dev/tags/open-source), [#llm](https://daily.dev/tags/llm), [#llama](https://daily.dev/tags/llama) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/how-meta-won-open-source-ai-then-threw-it-away-9xiv94b13)