Greetings from JFK Terminal 5. I'm heading to Las Vegas to attend Google Next and the Google Leaders Circle. I'm excited to spend time with Google's AI leaders; it's going to be an awesome week. LMK if you're in Las Vegas this week.
For now, I'm going to forego writing about the financial markets and tariffs. I don't think anyone needs more speculation or punditry on the subject.
In the news: AI marches on. There's more new and exciting AI coming every day, and today is no exception. Meta Platforms has unveiled Llama 4, the latest iteration of its large language model series. There are two new models: Llama 4 Scout and Llama 4 Maverick. These models are designed to process and integrate multiple data formats, including text, video, images, and audio, enhancing their versatility across various applications.
Llama 4 Scout is a compact model capable of running on a single Nvidia H100 GPU. Meta says it features a 10-million-token context window and has demonstrated superior performance over competitors (such as Google's Gemma 3 and Mistral 3.1) in various benchmarks. Llama 4 Maverick, a more robust model, delivers performance comparable to OpenAI's GPT-4o and DeepSeek-V3 in coding and reasoning tasks, while utilizing fewer active parameters.
Meta is also developing Llama 4 Behemoth, an advanced model with 288 billion active parameters and a total of 2 trillion parameters. The company says that Behemoth surpasses models like GPT-4.5 and Claude Sonnet 3.7 on STEM benchmarks. All Llama 4 models employ a "mixture of experts" (MoE) architecture, which activates only the necessary components for a given task, optimizing resource utilization.
Meta plans to integrate these AI models into its Meta AI assistant across platforms including WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, and the web. The company wants to reach one billion users by the end of 2025, building on the 600 million users who accessed Meta AI by December 2024.
To support its AI initiatives, Meta says it has committed up to $65 billion in investments for 2025, reflecting the company's strategic focus on advancing artificial intelligence technologies.
As always your thoughts and comments are both welcome and encouraged. Just reply to this email. -s
P.S. If you're heading to POSSIBLE (April 30 | Miami), please join us at the Shelly Palmer Innovation Series VIP Breakfast presented by 3C Ventures featuring Mark Cuban, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Michael Kassan, and me. Register .
P.S. If you're heading to POSSIBLE (April 30 | Miami), please join us at the Shelly Palmer Innovation Series VIP Breakfast presented by 3C Ventures featuring Mark Cuban, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Michael Kassan, and me. .
Shelly Palmer is the Professor of Advanced Media in Residence at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and CEO of The Palmer Group, a consulting practice that helps Fortune 500 companies with technology, media and marketing. Named he covers tech and business for , is a regular commentator on CNN and writes a popular . He's a , and the creator of the popular, free online course, . Follow or visit .
