Tag: meta

Meta postpones launch of «Avocado» model until «at least» May

Meta’s new model can’t beat Gemini 3, and is delayed for more work. (Picture: generated)
After spending untold billions on talent, data centers and chips, homegrown and from AMD and Nvidia, Meta’s new foundational model is found lacking.

Pushing back the launch from «early 2026» is due to performance issues, The New York Times reports — as the model «currently falls between Gemini 2.5 and Gemini 3.»

This falls far behind the Meta Superintelligence Lab’s ambitions of «pushing the frontier,» after working on the new model «for months,» Reuters reports.

— We’re ​excited for people ​to see ⁠what we’ve been cooking very soon, a Meta spokesperson told Reuters.

Apparently, Meta AI has considered «temporarily» licensing Google’s Gemini model to propel their AI products while they wait for their own models to catch up.

Read more: The New York Times (paywalled) and Reuters.

Meta announces new processor generation focused on inference

Meta’s MTIA-chips are supposed to support recommendations and AI for «billions» of people. (Picture: Meta)
Tapping their long-time partner Broadcom, Meta’s new in-house chips are built to scale from recommendation engines to advanced AI workflows.

The new generation Meta Training and Inference Accelerator (MTIA) isn’t built to replace the chips sourced from AMD or Nvidia, but are intended to supplement them and achieve «the lowest possible price.»

MTIA-chips are taking a different tack on developing AI models, optimizing for inference — the process of answering AI queries — instead of training. Most chips are customized for training, which is more compute intensive, but the majority of a chip’s life is spent putting together answers in production.

— Chip designs are based on projected workloads, but by the time the hardware reaches production — often two years later — those workloads may have shifted substantially, Meta says in their press release.

The new chips «have either already been deployed or are scheduled for deployment in 2026 or 2027,» Meta says — and they don’t disclose just how many of these they are making.

Read more: Meta’s press release. Writeups on Reuters and CNBC.

Ex-Meta chief AI scientist raises $1 billion to build world models

After leaving Meta at the end of 2025, LeCun’s new startup is already raking in the money. (Picture: generated)
Hot off the $1B raise for Fei Fei Li’s World Labs, the former AI boss at Meta, Yann LeCun, is raising as much for his Paris-based Advanced Machine Intelligence.

CEO Alexandre LeBrun notes to TechCrunch that world models are the latest buzzword in AI, but cautions that the startup is doing «fundamental research» and won’t be launching any products «for years.»

LeCun and LeBrun both say that generative AI models work by predicting text or images, and are severely limited when it comes to interacting with the real, messy, and unpredictable world.

AMI sees their clients as being in «industrial process control, automation, wearable devices, robotics, healthcare, and beyond,» according to their front page.

According to Reuters, their technology might show up in Meta’s AI glasses «in the short term.»

Read more: Reuters, TechCrunch and Wired.

WhatsApp tentatively allows AI chatbots competing with Meta in Europe

WhatsApp sets steep prices for rival AI access. (Picture: generated)
As the EU Commission is considering «interim measures» against the messaging app for refusing chatbots not made by Meta, WhatsApp is slightly opening the door to rivals in Europe.

The platform has 3 billion users, and is considered a «gatekeeper» in EU laws, subject to demands for equal access.

The compromise Meta is rolling out is that rival chatbots will be allowed on the platform, but have to pay their way.

The fees range from €0.0490 to €0.1323 for «non-template messages.» That could ratchet up quickly, considering that chatbot sessions cover multiple messages across millions of users, writes TechCrunch.

The European Commission is said to be «analyzing» how this move «might affect its interim measures» as well as the broader investigation, Reuters reports.

Read more: Reuters and TechCrunch.

Meta to purchase 6GW of custom AMD AI chips, take up to 10% ownership

Joining forces with AMD, Meta is set to receive hundreds of thousands of custom inference chips. (Picture: Meta)
According to Reuters, the deal is worth $60 billion, runs over five years, and comes hot on the heels of another Meta deal with Nvidia earlier this month.

The agreement will see the first gigawatt of GPUs and CPUs delivered in the second half of 2026, and includes several as-yet-to-debut rackable chips.

AMD and Meta have long been partners in developing custom chips, but these are specifically built for inference, the process of creating answers for user queries.

— This is an important step for Meta as we diversify our compute, says Mark Zuckerberg on the deal.

AMD entered into a similar deal with OpenAI in October, 2025, meaning it might soon be 20% owned by AI labs.

Read more: AMD press release, Meta’s release, and Reuters report.

Nvidia strikes «multi-year strategic partnership» with Meta for AI chips

Likely costing a significant measure of Meta’s capital expenditures, the deal is expected to be in tens of billions dollars or more.
Both Meta and Nvidia are announcing a long-term, multi-generational strategic partnership today — without mentioning the price.

Meta, already a top customer for Nvidia, will use their chips in a «large-scale deployment» to build out data centers «optimized for AI training and inference,» they say.

The cost of the deal will likely run into the tens of billions of dollars or more, CNBC reckons, and includes access to future chips as well as the current Blackwell and Vera Rubin generations.

— We do expect a good portion of Meta’s capex to go toward this Nvidia build-out, chip analyst Ben Bajarin of Creative Strategies tells CNBC.

Reuters notes that Meta is likely one of the top three customers accounting for more than half of Nvidia’s sales.

Read more: Meta announcement, Nvidia announcement. Writeups on CNBC, Reuters and The Verge.

EU investigating WhatsApp AI ban, considering «interim actions»

The EU might decide that WhatsApp has to open for competing AI bots sooner rather than later. (Picture: European Commission)
The European Commission said yesterday that it had notified Meta on possible action to open up WhatsApp to rival AI chatbots.

Meta banned all AI chatbots other than Meta AI from WhatsApp on January 15th, and while the EU can take a long time to investigate antitrust allegations — they are considering issuing an early order to «avoid Meta’s new policy irreparably harming competition in Europe,» says Teresa Ribera, The EU’s Executive Vice-President for Clean, Just and Competitive Transition.

WhatsApp has over 3 billion users worldwide and qualifies as a gatekeeper in EU parlance, subject to rules on equal access.

Meta says that «There are many AI options and people can use them from app stores, operating systems, devices, websites, and industry partnerships,» in a statement to Reuters.

The process following this formal notification is that parties can examine the EU’s files, reply in writing and then receive a hearing. After that, the Commission will consider «interim measures,» such as restoring access for competitors, even as the case moves forward in their systems.

Read more: Statement by the EC, writeup on Reuters.

Meta disables AI character access for teens, but general AI use is fine

The next version of the chatbots will have default «age-appropriate protections,» Meta says. (Picture: Meta)
In an inconspicuous update to a months-old blog post, Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri and Superintelligence head Alexandr Wang wrote that they are suspending AI characters for teens.

— Starting in the coming weeks, teens will no longer be able to access AI characters across our apps until the updated experience is ready, they write.

Continue reading “Meta disables AI character access for teens, but general AI use is fine”

First new AI models from Meta released internally this month

Meta’s Avocado is progressing, but there’s a “tremendous amount of work” still to do. (Picture: generated)
Meta’s Superintelligence Labs have released some models internally, CTO Andrew Bosworth tells Reuters.

The models «show a lot of promise» and are «very good,» he says.

Meta has been rumored for a while to have a couple of models in the works, including the Avocado model for text and an image/video-focused model named Mango.

These models now seem out of training are showing promise internally.

Bosworth also warns that there’s «a tremendous amount of work to do post-training.»

Meta hasn’t launched a new model since Llama 4 in April 2025, but Bosworth is hinting to Reuters that 2026-27 are «important years for bringing consumer products to market.»

Read the full scoop at Reuters.

Zuckerberg unveils «Meta Compute» initiative to secure infrastructure

Meta is serious about investing in data centers in the coming years. (Picture: generated)
The Meta CEO announced his new «top level» compute team on threads, saying «Meta is planning to build tens of gigawatts this decade.»

He also said they will expand to «hundreds of gigawatts,» «over time.»

— How we engineer, invest, and partner to build this infrastructure will become a strategic advantage, Zuckerberg continues.

There are lots of obstacles to build global infrastructure like this, and challenges in «operating our global datacenter fleet and network,» Zuckerberg says.

The team will be headed up by Meta’s head of global infrastructure Santosh Janardhan and Daniel Gross, in close collaboration with newly hired Dina Powell McCormick.

Meta hasn’t released a frontier model since the Llama series in April, 2025, which saw lots of controversies. They have since formed a Superintelligence Lab from across the industry to develop the next generation of models. There is no timeline for when they’ll be ready, but the ambition is real, Zuckerberg says:

— [we want to] deliver personal superintelligence to billions of people around the world, he closes his message.

Read more: Zuck’s threads message, Reuters, TechCrunch, Business Insider.

Meta buys into 6 GW of nuclear to power its Prometheus data center

Meta is betting on nuclear for its AI power needs in Ohio, US. (Picture: Adobe)
Three nuclear power companies have been selected by Meta to supply its «supercluster» being built in New Albany, Ohio.

Together, they are offering up to six gigawatts of power from established nuclear reactors to more experimental small modular reactors.

The deals are a result of a request for proposals from Meta in December 2024, TechCrunch writes, and they have now selected Vistra (2.1 GW) for their existing nuclear plants, and Oklo (1.2 GW) and TerraPower (up to 2.1 GW) for their modular reactors.

TerraPower was co-founded by Bill Gates, while Sam Altman is the biggest investor in Oklo.

TerraPower and Oklo are still in the startup phase, with capacity for TerraPower expected to come online in 2032, while Oklo’s «nuclear technology campus» won’t be coming online until 2030, CNBC writes.

No financial details of the deals have been made public, but Meta has committed to spending $600 billion on infrastructure over the next three years.

Read more: Writeups on TechCrunch, CNBC.

Meta buys Manus, producer of autonomous agents, for $2 billion

Meta plans to integrate Manus’s agents across both professional and consumer products. (Picture: Manus)
Manus was originally a Chinese company, but moved to Singapore to avoid tariffs, and will now close all its investor ties and business in the country.

The Wall Street Journal cites sources placing the deal at $2 billion.

Their main product is an agent capable of functioning as a digital employee, that can complete tasks in research, coding and data analysis with minimal supervision, Reuters writes.

Continue reading “Meta buys Manus, producer of autonomous agents, for $2 billion”

Meta is eyeing early 2026 for «Avocado» model, and it might be proprietary

The billion dollar crew at the Superintelligence Labs at Meta are readying their first release.
Meta’s next frontier model might not be open source, rumours say. (Picture: generated)
CNBC reports today that Meta is coming closer to a release of their next frontier model — four months after forming their Superintelligence Labs.

The model is rumored to not be in the Llama family of open source models, as The Zuck himself opined in July that «We’ll need to be rigorous about mitigating these risks and careful about what we choose to open source.»

Therefore, the «Avacado» family of models might well be proprietary, also after Meta saw lots of components of its Open Source models getting incorporated in other advanced models.

Little is known about the upcoming model, apart from the fact that it will be «frontier,» and there has apparently been discussions on releasing it this year — but the official plan is that is scheduled for Q1 2026, according to CNBC.

Read more: Full scoop at CNBC.

Apple’s interface chief leaves for new Meta AI design studio

Alan Dye, the Liquid Glass chief is leaving Apple for greener pastures at Meta.
Alan Dye introducing the Liquid Glass design he oversaw at Apple, in June, 2025. (Picture: Apple)
Alan Dye, who has been heading up user interface design for Apple for the last ten years, is officially leaving to lead AI design for Meta, reports Bloomberg.

He brings with him his deputy at Apple, Billy Sorrentino, and will oversee a new studio that encompasses hardware, software and AI integration across all of Meta’s products — including future AI devices.

— Our idea is to treat intelligence as a new design material and imagine what becomes possible when it is abundant, capable, and human-centered, writes Mark Zuckerberg on Threads, not being short of ambition.

He goes on to say that Meta will «elevate design,» and put together people with talents in «craft, creative vision, systems thinking, and deep experience building iconic products that bridge hardware and software»

The potential is «enormous,» Zuck says, for AI glasses and «other devices» to change how we connect with «technology and each other.»

Read more: Scoop by Bloomberg, writeups by The Verge and 9to5Mac.