From the archive
Meta releases Llama 2 for research and commercial use
Llama 2 makes pretrained and chat-tuned model weights available, with Microsoft and other hosting partners.
Meta released Llama 2 on July 18, 2023, alongside an expanded partnership with Microsoft . The release made pretrained and conversationally fine-tuned model weights available for research and commercial use under Llama 2's license.
A downloadable model family
The weights and starting code gave organizations a way to run and adapt the models in their own infrastructure. The release extended access beyond the research-focused distribution of the first Llama generation. Commercial availability remained subject to the model's license terms.
Hosting partners
Llama 2 joined the Azure AI model catalog and was available through providers including Amazon Web Services and Hugging Face . Microsoft also supported local deployment on Windows.
These routes separated obtaining the model weights from operating a hosted model service. The announcement added a downloadable alternative to closed hosted models while leaving infrastructure choices to the application.