Meta's upcoming model could catch up with GPT-5.5
According to Business Insider, in a meeting with employees on July 2, Wang confirmed that Meta's upcoming AI model, codenamed Watermelon, has kept up with OpenAI's GPT-5.5 based on benchmark reviews.
"Watermelon, the next model after Avocado, is in training and uses about 10 times more computational resources," Wang said. Avocado is the internal name for Muse Spark, the first model in the new product line, released in April. Muse Spark performed well in benchmark tests, but still fell behind rivals OpenAI or Anthropic.
Wang also hinted at Meta's new move on social media. In today's Twitter post, he said an update to Muse Spark is coming soon, featuring major improvements to programmability and agents to close the gap with competing models. When Twitter users asked when Meta would have a programming AI on par with Anthropic's Claude Opus, Wang replied "very soon" and affirmed that users will like what the company is developing.
Despite investing huge amounts of money in chips, data centers and talent, Meta has not been able to convince customers and programmers that the company's models are in the leading group, comparable to products from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic. If Wang's new assessment is accurate, this will be a sign that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's investment and talent attraction campaign is starting to pay off.
Meta and OpenAI have not yet commented.
Zuckerberg is trying to bring Meta to the top position in the AI race. Last year, he spent up to 14.3 billion USD to buy 49% of the shares of startup Scale AI and recruited CEO Alexandr Wang as Director of AI, and changed the name of the company's artificial intelligence department to Meta Super Intelligence Laboratory (MSL).
At Meta, Wang is in charge of an elite team of AI researchers and oversees AI-related activities, such as pushing hardware development. This year, the company announced to investors that it will spend $125-145 billion on chips, data centers and other infrastructure.
The meta also went through a series of internal changes. In May, the company laid off 10% of its employees (equivalent to 8,000 positions) and restructured another 7,000 positions. The same month, Meta employees distributed leaflets in many US offices, expressing dissatisfaction with the layoffs and the company's computer monitoring program. At the end of June, Meta announced the suspension of this program to investigate issues related to data leaks. According to AFP, Meta staff are still in a state of "anxiety and anger".
Thu Thao compiled