Alibaba Brings Meta's New Llama2 AI To Business Users: All You Need To Know

For Meta, which has had its Facebook platform banned in China along with other Western platforms, this partnership could foster closer ties with the second-largest economy in the world.

Alibaba's cloud computing division has achieved a significant milestone, becoming the first Chinese enterprise to support Meta's open-source AI model, Llama. This collaboration enables Alibaba's Chinese business users to develop programs based on the Llama model. Meta recently launched Llama2, a commercial version of Llama, providing businesses with a powerful, cost-effective alternative to expensive proprietary models offered by OpenAI and Google. Although Microsoft was announced as Meta's preferred partner for Llama2, the model is also available through other partners. 

In a statement published on its WeChat account, Alibaba Cloud announced the launch of the first training and deployment solution for the entire Llama2 series in China. This development allows developers on Alibaba Cloud to create customised large AI models.

For Alibaba, this partnership with Meta can potentially lead to long-term, loyal customers for its cloud business, especially during a period of heightened competition domestically and as it prepares for a stock market listing.

Additionally, this collaboration could bolster Alibaba's AI aspirations and keep it up-to-date with the latest technological advancements in the AI field, especially given the US government's efforts to restrict Chinese companies' access to AI technologies.

On the other hand, for Meta, which has had its Facebook platform banned in China along with other Western platforms, this partnership could foster closer ties with the second-largest economy in the world.

China has been striving to catch up to the US in the AI domain, urging Chinese companies to rapidly develop homegrown and controllable AI models that can rival those of American firms. Alibaba, along with Tencent Holdings and other peers, has been actively pursuing the development of its own AI models.

Llama2, similar to models powering popular chatbots like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Bard, is a large machine-learning model trained on extensive data to generate coherent and natural-sounding outputs.

According to Meta, Llama2 will be available for free to companies with fewer than 700 million monthly active users. For programs with a larger user base, a license from Meta will be required.

Alibaba also emphasised that if a client wishes to use Llama2 to offer services to the Chinese public, it must comply with Chinese laws and avoid any practices or content that could be detrimental to the country.