Meta is “working with the public sector to adopt Llama across the US government,” according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

The comment, made during his opening remarks for Meta’s third-quarter earnings conference call on Wednesday, raises a lot of important questions: Exactly what parts of the government will use Meta’s AI models? What will the AI be used for? Will there be any sort of specific military applications of Llama? Is Meta getting paid for any of this?

Additionally, there is a close relationship with the government that Meta's AI competitors are establishing. OpenAI and Anthropic recently announced that they will share their models with the US AI Safety Institute for early safety testing. Google has a documented relationship as an AI provider to the Pentagon, although this relationship is intermittent.

In a recent blog postOpenAI mentioned that its models are being used by DARPA, the United States Agency for International Development, and Los Alamos National Laboratory.

While we wait to hear about Meta’s AI work with the government, Zuckerberg teased a bit more about the upcoming Llama model on the Q3 earnings call. He said version four is training on “a larger group than I’ve seen for anything else that others are doing” and that he expects “new modalities,” “more robust reasoning,” and “much faster” performance when it debuts next year.

He acknowledged that Meta plans to continue spending more on AI in 2025, which “may not be what investors want to hear in the near term.” But he believes the benefits are worth it.

“I’m pretty excited about all the work we’re doing right now,” he said. “This may be the most dynamic time I’ve seen in our industry, and I’m focused on making sure we build amazing things and make the most of the opportunities ahead.”

As a business, Meta continues to grow. The company reported revenue of $40.5 billion for the third quarter, up 19 percent from a year earlier, and $17.3 billion in profit. And it says 3.29 billion people use at least one of its apps every day, up 5 percent from a year earlier.