Key Takeaways
- Meta is working on a new image and video AI model code-named Mango.
- The model is expected to launch in the first half of 2026.
- Mango will debut alongside a new text-based model called Avocado.
- The effort is led by Meta’s new chief AI officer Alexandr Wang.
- Meta plans to invest $70–72 billion in AI infrastructure in 2025 alone.
- The company is shifting focus away from the metaverse toward AI-first products.
Meta Platforms is accelerating its artificial intelligence roadmap with the development of a new image and video generation model known internally as Mango, according to reports from The Wall Street Journal. The project reflects Meta’s growing focus on multimodal AI systems that can understand and generate text, images, and video together.
Executives Alexandr Wang, Meta’s chief AI officer, and Chris Cox, the company’s chief product officer, discussed Mango during an internal Q&A session. People familiar with the discussion say the model is planned for release in the first half of 2026. News of the project helped push Meta shares up more than two percent.
Mango is being built alongside Meta’s next major language model, code-named Avocado, which is also expected to launch in early 2026. Together, the two models are meant to strengthen Meta’s position in generative AI as competition intensifies across the industry.
The initiative comes after a major shake-up of Meta’s AI operations. Wang, the 28-year-old founder of Scale AI, joined Meta in mid-2025 following a $14.3 billion investment in his company. He now leads Meta Superintelligence Labs, a new division tasked with building advanced AI systems that CEO Mark Zuckerberg has described as central to Meta’s future.
Meta’s renewed urgency follows internal disappointment with Llama 4, which failed to gain strong traction among developers earlier this year. Since then, Zuckerberg has personally pushed to recruit top AI researchers, sometimes offering compensation packages reportedly worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
While Meta already offers Movie Gen, a model that creates videos, images, and audio from text prompts, Mango is expected to go further in quality and scale. It will build on lessons learned from Meta AI, which is already integrated across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
At the same time, Meta is pulling back from its metaverse ambitions. Reports suggest the company may cut the metaverse division’s budget by up to 30 percent next year, with possible layoffs beginning as early as January. Those resources are increasingly being redirected toward AI infrastructure, including massive GPU clusters and custom silicon.
Meta has committed to spending up to $72 billion on AI in 2025, with even higher investment planned beyond that. Wang has also hinted at a shift toward more closed and proprietary AI models that Meta can monetize directly, moving away from the open-source strategy that defined earlier Llama releases.
With Mango, Meta is making it clear that its future bets are firmly centered on AI powered creativity, media generation, and next-generation digital experiences.
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