Meta’s Alexandr Wang Claims Major Stride in AI Race With New Model Closing Gap with OpenAI’s GPT-5.5

Meta Platforms is making significant progress in the artificial intelligence model race, its superintelligence chief, Alexandr Wang, told employees on Friday, marking what could be an important milestone in the company’s aggressive push to catch up with industry leaders.

In an internal town hall, Wang said that Meta’s upcoming AI model, codenamed Watermelon, has caught up with OpenAI’s flagship GPT-5.5 model, according to two sources cited by Reuters.

Wang cited the achievement based on closely followed AI model benchmarks, though it was not clear which specific benchmarks were referenced.

“Watermelon, our next model after Avocado, is currently in training,” Wang said in the town hall, according to a person familiar with the matter. “Watermelon uses an order of magnitude more compute than Avocado,” he added, referring to Meta’s internal codename for Muse Spark, the first in a family of models that the company released in April.

Wang alluded to that progress publicly as well. In a post on X on Thursday, he said an update to the current model, Muse Spark, is coming soon, with major gains in coding and agentic capabilities aimed at closing the gap with rival models. Asked by a user when Meta would have a coding model on par with Anthropic’s Claude Opus, Wang replied that it would be “pretty soon,” adding that users would like what the company has “cooking.”

Meta’s AI ambitions have long hinged on a simple goal: closing the gap with OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic. Despite massive investments in chips, data centers, and talent, the company has struggled to convince developers and customers that its models belong at the industry’s leading edge.

If Wang’s assessment is accurate, it would mark the clearest sign yet that Meta’s investment and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s aggressive talent blitz are beginning to pay off, even as the race continues to move at a rapid pace. GPT-5.5 is a powerful AI model that OpenAI released in April of this year. OpenAI then debuted its most powerful model yet, GPT-5.6, late last month, but hasn’t released it generally yet, based on the U.S. government’s requests.

In April, Meta released the first in a series of models called Muse Spark, which performed well on benchmarks but did not match or exceed OpenAI or other labs such as Anthropic. Zuckerberg is ferociously pushing for Meta to get ahead in the AI race. He appointed Wang last year to head this effort, renaming the company’s AI division Meta Superintelligence Labs.

At Meta, Wang oversees a team of elite AI researchers known as TBD, along with other AI efforts, such as a recent hardware push. Meta has offered top AI talent hundreds of millions of dollars each to join, Business Insider previously reported.

That talent push comes as Meta ramps up spending on infrastructure. The company told investors this year that it expects to spend between $125 billion and $145 billion on chips, data centers, and other infrastructure, up from an earlier forecast of $115 billion to $135 billion, citing rising component costs and additional data center spending.

Meta plans to pour resources into attracting top talent and scaling compute power to close the capability gap with frontrunners. The internal codenames, Avocado for Muse Spark and Watermelon for the next iteration, suggest a methodical progression, with each generation leveraging significantly more computational resources.

Wang indicates that Meta is focusing heavily on practical improvements in areas like coding and agentic capabilities, where real-world utility can drive adoption. The emphasis on agentic AI, systems that can perform complex, multi-step tasks autonomously, aligns with broader industry trends as companies move beyond simple chat interfaces toward more sophisticated applications.

The company’s willingness to spend aggressively on both talent and infrastructure is interpreted as Zuckerberg’s commitment to not falling behind in what many see as the defining technology of the era. By renaming the division Meta Superintelligence Labs, the company has signaled its ambition to push the boundaries of what AI can achieve.

However, competition in the industry remains intense. OpenAI continues to set the pace with its GPT series, while Anthropic’s Claude models have gained strong traction in enterprise settings. Google’s Gemini family also represents formidable competition, particularly given its integration with Android and other Google services.

For Meta, success in AI is not just about matching benchmarks. Analysts have noted that the company needs to translate technical progress into products and experiences that drive user engagement across its family of apps, from Facebook and Instagram to WhatsApp. Improved coding capabilities are expected to enhance developer tools, while stronger agentic features could power more sophisticated virtual assistants and automation tools.