"Meta Platforms Inc.'s Mark Zuckerberg, months into building one of the priciest teams in technology history, is getting personally involved in day-to-day work and pivoting the company's focus to an artificial intelligence model it can make money off of. One new model, codenamed Avocado, is expected to debut sometime next spring, and may be launched as a closed model one that can be tightly controlled and that Meta can sell access to, according to people familiar with the matter,"
"The move, which aligns with what rivals Google and OpenAI do with their models, would mark the biggest departure to date from the open-source strategy Meta has touted for years. Open-source models allow outside developers and researchers to review and build upon the code. Meta's new Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang is an advocate of closed models, according to the people."
Mark Zuckerberg is personally overseeing a shift at Meta toward developing a monetizable AI model codenamed Avocado. Avocado may launch as a closed model that Meta can tightly control and sell access to. The project follows dissatisfaction with Llama 4 and a major hiring campaign that brought in Alexandr Wang and other AI researchers with multiyear compensation packages. A team called TBD Lab is training Avocado by distilling several third-party models, including Google's Gemma, OpenAI's gpt-oss and Alibaba's Qwen. The move signals a departure from Meta's prior open-source emphasis toward commercially controlled AI products.
Read at www.mercurynews.com
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