Meta is finally catching up to OpenAI, its AI leader says

Meta's AI leader Alexandr Wang stated during an internal town hall that the company's upcoming artificial intelligence model, code-named 'Watermelon,' has achieved performance parity with OpenAI's GPT-5.5 model.

Wang's claim indicates that Meta's research efforts have narrowed the gap with OpenAI, which has long been considered the leader in large language models. The specific comparison to GPT-5.5, a version of OpenAI's flagship model, provides a concrete benchmark for the achievement.

No independent verification of the claim has been provided, and it remains unclear when Watermelon will be released publicly. Meta has been investing heavily in AI infrastructure and talent to compete with OpenAI and other frontier labs.