Meta delays ‘Avocado’ foundational AI model rollout to May

Meta postponed the launch of its text-based foundational model 'Avocado' from March to at least May after internal benchmarks showed it trailing competitors like Gemini, Claude, and models from OpenAI on reasoning, coding, and writing tasks. Billions have been invested in its development. This matters because it highlights execution challenges and competitive benchmarking pressures in the race for frontier models, potentially affecting Meta's positioning in generative AI capabilities.