Big Technology Podcast · Wednesday, July 8, 2026
Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth discussed the challenges Meta faced with Llama 3, explaining that previous versions had pulled forward future research bets, leaving them behind in areas like reasoning. He revealed that Mark Zuckerberg entered "Ghost Founder mode" to refocus the company on AI, securing necessary compute and talent, which has since led to improvements with models like Muse Spark.
“You know, kind of unbeknownst to us at the time, and kind of speaks to the fact that we weren't focused enough on it, Llama 3, which was a great model and well-received, to get to that model, they had kind of pulled forward all the future bets into that, into that model.”
“What that meant when it came time for Llama 4, we didn't have any of the pathfinding, the other labs still had going. So that means you're behind on reasoning. You're behind on maybe of experts. You're behind on a bunch of these critical technologies that have been used to continue the pace of progress.”
“This is such a cliché, but I don't have a better word for it, Ghost founder mode. Like he really did flip into a mode that is, like, you, unique and reserved for Mark, um, that where he just became so focused on getting us all the compute we needed, getting us all the talent that we needed, the researchers that we've signed that you said, you know, and, and so we really landed about a year ago.”