Meta is reportedly engaged on a brand new AI mannequin known as ‘Avocado’ and it may not be open supply

Mark Zuckerberg has for months publicly hinted that he’s backing away from open-source AI fashions. Now, Meta’s newest AI pivot is beginning to come into focus. The corporate is reportedly engaged on a brand new mannequin, recognized inside Meta as “Avocado,” which may mark a significant shift away from its earlier open-source strategy to AI improvement.

Each CNBC and Bloomberg have reported on Meta’s plans surrounding “Avocado,” with each retailers saying the mannequin “may” be proprietary reasonably than open-source. Avocado, which is due out someday in 2026, is being labored on inside “TBD,” a smaller group inside Meta’s AI Superintelligence Labs that is headed up by  Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang, who apparently favors closed fashions.

It is not clear what Avocado may imply for Llama. Earlier this yr, Zuckerberg mentioned he anticipated Meta would “proceed to be a pacesetter” in open supply however that it would not “open supply every thing that we do.” He is additionally cited security considerations as they relate to superintelligence. As each CNBC and Bloomberg observe, Meta’s shift has additionally been pushed by points surrounding the discharge of Llama 4. The Llama 4 “Behemoth” mannequin has been delayed for months; The New York Occasions reported earlier this yr that Wang and different execs had “mentioned abandoning” it altogether. And builders have reportedly been unimpressed with the Llama 4 fashions which can be obtainable.

There have been different shakeups inside the ranks of Meta’s AI teams as Zuckerberg has spent billions of {dollars} constructing a crew devoted to superintelligence. The corporate laid off several hundred employees from its Basic Synthetic Intelligence Analysis (FAIR) unit. And Meta veteran and Chief AI Scientist Yann LeCun, who has been a proponent for open-source and skeptical of LLMs, just lately introduced he was leaving the corporate.

That Meta could now be pursuing a closed AI mannequin is a big shift for Zuckerberg, who simply final yr mentioned “fuck that” about closed platforms and penned a prolonged memo titled “Open Supply AI is the Path Ahead.” However the notoriously aggressive CEO can also be apparently intensely nervous about falling behind OpenAI, Google and different rivals. Meta has mentioned it expects to spend $600 billion over the following few years to fund its AI ambitions.