Meta and Microsoft have announced support for the two major language models (LLM) Llama 2 in Azure and Windows. Llama 2 is designed to empower developers and organizations to create generative tools and experiences based on artificial intelligence. The new version of Llama 2 has been released to commercial customers for the first time.

Meta and Microsoft share the idea of democratizing AI and its benefits. Microsoft offers developers a choice of the types of models to build on, with open and boundary models supported.

Azure customers can fine-tune and deploy the 7B, 13B, and 70B-parameter Llama 2 models easily and more safely on Azure, the platform for the most widely adopted frontier and open models. In addition, Llama will be optimized to run locally on Windows. Windows developers will be able to use Llama by targeting the DirectML execution provider through the ONNX Runtime, allowing a seamless workflow as they bring generative AI experiences to their applications.