Meta to take on Gemini and ChatGPT with new ‘Avocado’ AI model, expected to launch in 2026

Meta

Meta has been racing to strengthen its position in the AI world, and earlier this year CEO Mark Zuckerberg took a bold step by creating a new unit called Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL). The team was formed by hiring top researchers away from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic, a signal that Zuckerberg wasn’t fully satisfied with the capabilities of Meta’s existing Llama models and wanted to accelerate the company’s push towards superintelligence, where AI performs at human-like levels across most tasks.

Since then, Meta has stayed mostly quiet about its progress. But Zuckerberg has hinted that something big is brewing. Back in July, he said he expected future versions of Llama to be “the most advanced in the industry” and capable of bringing the benefits of AI to everyone.

So when will we actually see Meta’s next big AI model?

A new report from CNBC suggests that Meta is working on a model codenamed Avocado. Many inside the company had reportedly expected it to arrive before the end of this year, but the timeline has now slipped. Avocado is now expected to debut sometime in the first quarter of 2026, slightly later than planned.

According to the report, the model is currently facing training and performance-testing challenges — the kind of hurdles companies usually want to resolve before releasing a major AI system. Meta, however, maintains that nothing is off track. “Our model training efforts are going according to plan and have had no meaningful timing changes,” a company spokesperson told CNBC.

The bigger twist, though, may be Meta’s changing approach to open-source AI. Zuckerberg has always championed the idea of open models, even positioning it as Meta’s advantage over rivals like Google and OpenAI. But over the past few months, he has signalled a shift. In July, he said the company would need to be “careful about what we choose to open source,” hinting at growing concerns over safety, misuse, and competitive pressures.

Now, the CNBC report claims that Avocado may actually be a closed-source model — similar to Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. If that happens, developers would no longer be able to freely download model weights or examine internal components, marking a major departure from Meta’s earlier philosophy.

Despite the delays and uncertainty, Zuckerberg remains upbeat. During Meta’s earnings call, he said the company has “the highest talent density in the industry” and is focused on building the next generation of AI products. More details, he promised, will be shared in the months ahead.