Inside Meta’s gamble on monetizable AI tech

The shift would be a big departure from the open-source strategy it has touted for years.

- By Kurt WAGNER AND RILEY GRIFFIN

META PLATFORMS' Mark Zuckerberg has teased the idea of developing other closed AI models in the past.

(LEXIE MORELAND WWD via Getty Images)

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 monetize.

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, who declined to speak publicly about internal plans.

The move, which aligns with what rivals Google and OpenAl 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.

Meta’s strategy shifted dramatically this year after the company released Llama 4, an open-source model that disappointed Silicon Valley and Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive.

He sidelined some of the people who worked on that project and personally recruited top AI researchers and leaders, in some cases offering them hundreds of millions of dollars in multiyear pay packages. Some, like Wang, came in through a $14.3-billion — investment deal. Now, Zuckerberg spends much of his time and energy working closely with those new hires, in a group called TBD Lab.

The TBD group is using several third-party models as part of the training process for Avocado, distilling from rival models including Google’s Gemma, OpenAI’s gpt-oss and Qwen, a model from the Chinese tech giant Ali baba Group Holding Ltd., the people said.