Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:META, XETRA:FB2A, SIX:FB) shares fell more than 3% on Friday, trading at about $618, following reports that the company is delaying the rollout of its latest artificial intelligence model, code-named Avocado.
According to sources speaking to The New York Times, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who in July said the company’s new AI models would “push the frontier in the next year or so,” now faces uncertainty in meeting that timeline.
Three people with knowledge of the matter, who were not authorized to speak publicly, said Meta’s new foundational AI model has fallen short of the performance of competing models from Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic in internal tests for reasoning, coding, and writing.
While Avocado has outperformed Meta’s previous AI models and exceeded the performance of Google’s Gemini 2.5 model from March, it reportedly lags behind Google’s Gemini 3.0, released in November, the sources said.
As a result, Meta has postponed Avocado’s release to at least May, rather than the originally planned launch this month.
The sources added that Meta’s AI division has discussed temporarily licensing Google’s Gemini models to power its AI products, though no final decisions have been made.