{"id":223230,"date":"2026-03-13T12:13:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-13T16:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/13\/metas-avocado-delay-puts-135-billion-ai-bet-under-scrutiny\/"},"modified":"2026-03-13T12:40:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T16:40:12","slug":"metas-avocado-delay-puts-135-billion-ai-bet-under-scrutiny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/13\/metas-avocado-delay-puts-135-billion-ai-bet-under-scrutiny\/","title":{"rendered":"Meta\u2019s Avocado Delay Puts $135 Billion AI Bet Under Scrutiny"},"content":{"rendered":"

Meta\u2019s Avocado Delay Puts $135 Billion AI Bet Under Scrutiny<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.pymnts.com\/news\/artificial-intelligence\/2026\/meta-avocado-delay-puts-135-billion-dollar-ai-bet-under-scrutiny\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-03-13 12:13:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: www.pymnts.com<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Meta<\/span> delayed the launch of Avocado, its next-generation artificial intelligence model.<\/span><\/p>\n

The company pushed the release to at least May from a planned debut this month, The New York Times <\/span>reported<\/span> Thursday (<\/span>March 12<\/span>).<\/span><\/p>\n

The delay follows internal testing that showed the model trailing leading systems from <\/span>Google<\/span>, <\/span>OpenAI<\/span> and <\/span>Anthropic<\/span> in key areas, including logical reasoning, programming and writing, the report said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Avocado outperformed Meta\u2019s previous generation models and some earlier competing systems, The Information <\/span>reported<\/span> Feb. 4<\/span>, but it failed to match the performance of Google\u2019s newest <\/span>Gemini<\/span> models, per the NYT report.<\/span><\/p>\n

The gap matters because Avocado was not intended as an incremental upgrade. The model was designed to compete directly with frontier systems from OpenAI and Google and to serve as the centerpiece of Meta\u2019s next phase of AI development.<\/span><\/p>\n

Internally, the model had been framed as a major leap forward. Meta Superintelligence Labs Product Manager <\/span>Megan Fu<\/span> described Avocado in an internal memo as the company\u2019s most capable base model yet and suggested it had the potential to outperform rival systems once additional post-training improvements were applied, per the report from The Information.<\/span><\/p>\n

Advertisement: Scroll to Continue<\/p>\n

The production version has not yet met that expectation.<\/span><\/p>\n

The delay also follows a difficult year for Meta\u2019s AI efforts. The company\u2019s <\/span>Llama 4 release<\/span> last year failed to generate strong developer enthusiasm, prompting an internal restructuring across parts of the AI organization, The Information <\/span>reported<\/span> Aug. 15<\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Avocado had been positioned internally as the reset.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Gemini Question and What It Signals<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n

The more revealing development may be what Meta is considering in the interim.<\/span><\/p>\n

The company\u2019s leadership discussed temporarily licensing Google\u2019s Gemini technology to power certain Meta products while Avocado is brought up to competitive performance, the NYT reported. No decision has been confirmed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Meta…<\/span><\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Meta\u2019s Avocado Delay Puts $135 Billion AI Bet Under Scrutiny https:\/\/www.pymnts.com\/news\/artificial-intelligence\/2026\/meta-avocado-delay-puts-135-billion-dollar-ai-bet-under-scrutiny\/ Publish Date: 2026-03-13 12:13:00…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":223231,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.pymnts.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Meta-AI.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[207],"class_list":["post-223230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-llama-4"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223230"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223230"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":223232,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223230\/revisions\/223232"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/223231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}