Meta is building a new AI model it plans to sell access to, abandoning the open-source strategy that Mark Zuckerberg championed for years.
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Key Takeaways
- Meta is abandoning open-source AI to build a closed paid model codenamed Avocado.
- Launch targeted for next spring, aligning Meta with OpenAI and Google.
- Llama 4’s disappointing reception triggered leadership shakeup and aggressive recruiting.
The model, codenamed Avocado, is expected to launch next spring as a “closed” system that Meta can monetize directly, according to Bloomberg’s Kurt Wagner and Riley Griffin. This would align Meta with rivals OpenAI and Google, which charge for access to their most capable models.
The shift comes after Llama 4, Meta’s open-source model released earlier this year, disappointed Zuckerberg and Silicon Valley. He sidelined some team members and recruited top AI researchers with multiyear pay packages worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
New Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang, who joined through Meta’s $14.3 billion acquisition of Scale AI, advocates for closed models. He now leads a group called TBD Lab that reports directly to Zuckerberg.
The team is training Avocado using several third-party models, including Qwen from Chinese tech giant Alibaba. That’s a notable turn for Zuckerberg, who warned on Joe Rogan’s podcast in January that Chinese models could be shaped by state censorship.
Yann LeCun, known as one of AI’s “godfathers” and a major open-source proponent, left Meta recently after years leading its long-term AI research. Some employees had been encouraged to keep him out of the spotlight, Bloomberg reported, because Meta no longer saw him as representative of its AI strategy.
Why it matters for newsrooms: Media organizations evaluating AI tools now face a landscape where even Meta, once the loudest voice for open AI development, is moving toward paid, proprietary systems. That could mean fewer free options for cash-strapped newsrooms and greater dependence on subscription-based AI services from a handful of tech giants.
