Google’s Gemma AI hits 150M downloads as Meta’s Llama soars past 1.2B

Written by Michael Anthony Bitoon

Published 14 May 2025

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Google’s open-source artificial intelligence (AI) model Gemma has reached 150 million downloads, a key milestone as the company competes with Meta’s larger Llama model in the AI space.

Omar Sanseviero, a developer relations engineer at Google DeepMind, announced the achievement on X over the weekend. “Gemma just passed 150 million downloads and over 70k variants on Hugging Face,” Sanseviero wrote. Developers have created more than 70,000 custom versions on the AI platform since Gemma’s launch in February 2024.

Despite this growth, Gemma trails behind Meta’s Llama, which hit 1.2 billion downloads by late April 2025. Google’s strategy focuses on creating smaller, more efficient models that require less computing power.

“Smaller models are more portable and able to be deployed for a wider scope of use cases, such as remote operations or devices with limited local storage,” explained Sam Mugel, CTO of Multiverse Computing. “Reducing the overall size of these models also reduces the energy required to operate them.”

The latest Gemma releases can process both images and text while supporting over 100 languages. Google has also created specialized versions for specific fields like drug discovery.

In March 2025, Google launched Gemma 3, designed to run on a single graphics processing unit. This makes the technology more accessible to developers with limited resources.

Commercial adoption faces challenges, however. Both Gemma and Llama use non-standard licensing terms that some developers consider risky for business applications.

This milestone comes as Google’s AI efforts gain momentum. Documents from an ongoing antitrust trial reveal that Google’s AI chatbot Gemini grew from 9 million daily users in October 2024 to 35 million by March 2025, with monthly active users reaching 350 million.

As the race between tech giants in AI development intensifies, Google’s focus on efficiency and accessibility through Gemma represents a strategic approach to carving out its place in the competitive open-source AI landscape.