Of the 14 authors credited on the landmark 2023 paper that introduced Llama, only three remain at Meta: research scientist Hugo Touvron, research engineer Xavier Martinet, and technical program leader Faisal Azhar.

The rest have left the company, many joining or founding emerging rivals.

This exodus is most pronounced at Mistral where former Meta researchers Guillaume Lample and Timothee Lacroix are co-founders.