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Meta May Have an Open-Source Edge in Enterprise

The company may want its models to be the default in the developer community.

Photo of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg
Photo by Anthony Quintano via CC BY 2.0

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Like practically every tech giant, Meta is spending a whole lot of cash on AI. 

During its earning call on Wednesday, the company reiterated its intention to invest between $60 billion and $65 billion this year, partly on expanding its AI strategy. CEO Mark Zuckerberg noted that much of the investment would go towards building out AI infrastructure, as well as growing its AI teams. Along with fueling its consumer AI efforts, the company noted that this infrastructure would power its next model, called Llama 4, which Zuckerberg called “the leading state-of-the-art model.”

Meta has yet to monetize its foundational models through a dedicated offering, focusing its efforts instead on open source. But given that open-source AI is currently the talk of the town with DeepSeek’s rapid rise to fame, Meta’s long-time commitment to open source — while its competitors create closed proprietary models — may work in its favor. 

“DeepSeek was a win generally for open source, and its philosophy for shared progression and advancement in the AI space,” said Thomas Randall, advisory director at Info-Tech Research Group. “But there’s a bit of cynicism here where Meta wants it to keep those [models] open source to be the default, rather than to share knowledge. There’s other motivations.” 

The fact that DeepSeek is already being restricted by hundreds of companies and faced a cybersecurity attack that forced it to limit signups could also give Meta an additional open-source edge in the U.S. “For enterprise AI adoption, security will be a top priority, giving U.S.-based technology firms a competitive edge,” said Tejas Dessai, director of research at Global X ETFs

Meta’s goal of establishing its Llama models as an open-source standard or a default in the developer community could put it in a “unique position” as far as AI assistants and agents for enterprises, said Dessai. 

  • If a company is looking to develop its own agents and “retain full control” using open source, many may turn to Meta for this, said Randall. 
  • It’s also not the only signal that Meta is eyeing enterprise agents. Zuckerberg said in Meta’s second-quarter earnings call in August that most of its enterprise applications would focus on “the business agent piece.” 
  • The company also hired Clara Shih, the former CEO of Salesforce AI, back in November to lead a new Business AI unit, a move that could specifically support agentic goals. 

On the other hand, many enterprises may not want to bear the cost or responsibility of creating customized agents, said Randall. While open source may be useful for “very large enterprises that want to invest in their own developer teams … It’s a huge, resource-intensive endeavor.” 

And while Meta is currently all about open source, Dessai said, “We see the potential for a model-as-a-service solution in the future.”