Meta appears to be moving toward a major change in its artificial intelligence strategy as reports suggest the company is developing a new model that may not follow its long standing open source approach. The upcoming system known internally as Avocado is expected to launch in early 2026 and may arrive as a closed and paid product, according to a report from a common publication.
The report states that Avocado is being built with stricter access controls. Meta is expected to limit external access to the model’s weights and introduce a pricing structure for usage. This move comes as the company faces rising AI development costs and increasing pressure to turn its heavy investments into measurable financial results. Competition in the race for advanced AI models is also growing, pushing Meta to rethink earlier strategies.
The shift is in line with recent comments from Mark Zuckerberg who said the company must be “careful about what we choose to open source” when discussing Meta’s vision for “personal superintelligence.” He had hinted that future models may not follow the same openness that defined the company’s previous releases.
According to the report, Avocado represents a new direction after Meta’s internal dissatisfaction with Llama 4, known internally as Behemoth. The system reportedly did not meet expectations and the project was redirected toward something more ambitious. This change also aligns with Meta’s appointment of Alexandr Wang as Chief AI Officer following a multibillion dollar deal related to his earlier startup. He now leads Meta’s TBD Lab which is building Avocado. Known for supporting closed model strategies, he is said to be influential in shaping Meta’s new approach of assigning a price tag to its next model.
The report also notes that Zuckerberg has instructed teams to use several outside systems including Google’s Gemma, OpenAI’s experimental GPT OSS, and Alibaba’s Qwen to support Avocado’s development. Alongside this strategic shift Meta has seen internal restructuring that included the departure of well known AI researcher Yann LeCun who has long supported open source work.
While some inside the company expected Avocado to be released by the end of 2025, the projected launch window has now shifted to the first quarter of 2026.
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