Mark Zuckerberg’s million-dollar hires are under pressure to deliver after Llama 4’s ‘botched launch’

Mark Zuckerberg’s multi-million-dollar elite AI team is facing a major test, as the newly-hired engineers and leaders are under intense pressure to deliver competitive products. The company is said to be working on Avocado – new Llama successor and frontier AI model – which is being developed inside TBD lab. Reportedly, the pressure has intensified following the ‘botched’ launch of Meta’s Llama 4 AI model, which was hit by reports of underwhelming real-world performance, poor coding ability and allegations of rigged benchmark scores.

CNBC recently reported that Alexandr Wang, chief AI officer of Meta AI, is facing the heat. Wang is tasked to deliver a top-tier AI model that helps the company regain momentum against rivals like Google and OpenAI, the publication reported citing people familiar with the matter. That pressure has increased as Google unveiled Gemini 3.0 last month to a positive reception. Meanwhile, OpenAI has also upped its game with GPT-5 and, more recently, GPT-5.2. Anthropic also debuted the Claude Opus 4.5 model in November.


The 28-year-old executive heads the elite internal unit known as TBD Lab, and Avocado is being developed under his watch. The people familiar with the matter said the model is said to be grappling with various training-related performance tests which are essential to ensure the system is well-received when it eventually debuts. Notably, the model was scheduled to launch in 2025 but the unveiling has reportedly been pushed to the first quarter of 2026.

Ex-GitHub CEO and Meta AI’s top executive Nat Friedman is also facing heat

Along with Wang, Nat Friedman is also under pressure, as he has been tasked with producing a breakout AI product, the people said. Under Friedman’s watch, Meta launched Vibes, a feed of AI-generated short videos, in September but it is widely viewed as inferior to OpenAI’s Sora 2, the people noted. This is because of criticism for being rushed to market and lacking key features, such as the ability to generate realistic lip-synced audio.

Meta employees working 70 hours-a-week

The pressure is also being felt by employees who are reportedly working 70 hours per week as the company cut hundreds of jobs and underwent restructurings throughout the year. Employees are also conflicted on the way things are being done in the company.

Meta has traditionally sought input from numerous groups responsible for areas like front-end user interface, design, algorithmic feeds and privacy for uniformity among the company’s apps, the people said. However, the products are reportedly not developed to accommodate foundation models, which Friedman views as bottlenecks responsible for slowing down ‘a rapid-fire development process’.

Friedman has called for the use of newer tools that have been calibrated to incorporate multiple AI models and various kinds of coding automation software often called AI agents, the people said.