The AI Landscape is Shifting? Meta's New Ambitious Project 'Watermelon' Emerges

Imagine this: You wake up in the morning and say to your smartphone AI, “I have an important meeting today; please organize the relevant materials and summarize them for a presentation.” If, in the past, AI might have missed the point or given slightly bizarre answers, what if it could handle the task perfectly, like a perceptive assistant who is always in sync with you? Recently, major news in the artificial intelligence (AI) industry has signaled the arrival of such a smart assistant.

Alexandr Wang, Meta’s AI chief, revealed at an internal town hall meeting that their next-generation AI model, ‘Watermelon,’ has reached performance parity with OpenAI’s flagship model, ‘GPT-5.5’ [Source 2, Source 3, Source 7]. There is a prevailing assessment that Meta’s aggressive pursuit of OpenAI, which has led the AI market, has finally begun to yield visible results [Source 6, Source 14].

Why is this important?

To regular users like us, the phrase ‘AI model performance has improved’ means more than just becoming smarter; it means the services we use every day will become much more sophisticated. Currently, Meta is working to integrate AI features not only into its social media platforms but into various applications we use [Source 12]. If Meta’s model stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the industry-leading GPT-5.5, the chatbots, photo editing tools, and content recommendation algorithms provided by Meta will become much more natural and powerful.

Furthermore, this announcement highlights the fierce war among technology companies. Meta plans to invest a staggering $125 billion to $145 billion—approximately 170 to 200 trillion Korean won—in the AI sector alone throughout 2026 [Source 4]. This is an astronomical amount for a single company to pour into its future, showing how AI development has become a battlefield where companies stake their survival.

Easy to understand: A comparison to a chef?

Let’s compare the ‘improvement in AI model performance’ to a chef. If the previous model was a chef who could cook basic dishes well but often made mistakes when complex and tricky orders came in, ‘Watermelon’ has compensated for those shortcomings and achieved the skills of a main chef at a high-end luxury hotel restaurant.

In fact, to train this model, Meta invested ten times (an order of magnitude) more computing resources than its previous model, ‘Avocado’ (internal project name) [Source 7]. Simply put, they increased the intensity of training by using more study material and better textbooks. As they say, the amount of study determines the quality; they have narrowed the performance gap by pouring in overwhelming computing resources [Source 14].

Where are we now?

So, can we use this technology right now? Unfortunately, Watermelon is currently in the training phase [Source 14]. In other words, it is not a finished product but is in a state of intense learning.

Meta has spent years trying to catch up with competitors like OpenAI, but there has been a prevalent view within the industry that Meta is still playing catch-up [Source 2, Source 13]. This announcement carries Meta’s strong will to put those market doubts to rest and prove its technological achievements. However, the stock market was somewhat cold. Immediately following the news, Meta’s stock closed down 4.9% at $582.90 [Source 4]. This suggests that investors value actual implementation into services and profitability just as much as technological progress.

What will happen in the future?

Through the Watermelon model, Meta is expected to significantly strengthen its coding capabilities and AI agent functions (AI that performs complex tasks on behalf of the user) [Source 14]. The possibility is growing that in the near future, Meta’s AI will move beyond simply answering questions to acting as a true assistant that manages our schedules and handles tasks for us.

The key point to watch moving forward is how Meta integrates this powerful model into actual services and how much further it closes the technological gap with OpenAI. AI competition is moving beyond a simple performance showdown to a question of who can provide services more deeply integrated into our lives more quickly.

AI Opinion

As competition among major tech companies intensifies, the performance of AI models is leveling up. Beyond mere intelligence, the core of the competition will now shift to how well models grasp human intent and provide practical assistance.

References

1. Meta’s Watermelon AI Model Has Caught up to OpenAI’s GPT-5.5, Says Alexandr Wang - Business Insider
2. Alexandr Wang says Meta’s coming AI has caught up with OpenAI’s flagship model - DNYUZ
3. Meta’s Watermelon AI model matches OpenAI’s GPT-5.5, Wang says - EdgeN
4. Meta AI Agents Lag as Wang Claims Watermelon Caught GPT-5.5 - Implicator
5. Meta AI chief says ‘Watermelon’ model has caught up to GPT-5.5 - American Bazaar
6. Meta’s Wang Says Watermelon Model Has Caught Up to GPT-5.5 - AI Weekly
7. Meta Stock: Alexandr Wang Says Watermelon AI Has Caught Up with OpenAI - CoinCentral
8. Meta debuts new AI model, attempting to catch up to Google… - CNBC
9. Meta’s LlamaCon was all about undercutting OpenAI - TechCrunch
10. Meta Pursues AI Advancements by Collaborating with Google and OpenAI - The Economic Times
11. Meta’s multibillion dollar AI strategy overhaul creates issues - CNBC
12. Meta Watermelon AI Claims GPT-5.5 Benchmark Catch-Up: Windows IT Impact - Windows Forum