Meta 'Avocado' Next-Gen Model Delayed to at Least May 2026 After Benchmark Underperformance

WBN Morning Brief·medium signal

Meta has postponed the release of its next-generation model codenamed 'Avocado' to at least May 2026 after internal evaluations showed it underperforming rivals on key benchmarks. This marks another setback for Meta's frontier model timeline and follows Qwen 3.5's February release raising the open-weight competitive bar significantly. Note: reported by a secondary aggregator source — treat as unconfirmed until corroborated by Bloomberg/Reuters.