US Stock Market Move | "The launch of the new AI model 'Avocado' by Meta (META.US) is postponed, causing a nearly 3% drop in early trading."

On Friday, Meta (META.US) fell nearly 3% in early trading, marking the largest intraday decline since March 6th, now trading at $610.23. On the news front, according to three sources, Meta's new AI model "Avocado," originally scheduled for mid-March release, has been delayed and may not be launched until May. Meta found in internal testing that "Avocado" lags behind competitors such as OpenAI and Anthropic in logical reasoning, programming, and writing capabilities, although it is better than their old model and Alphabet Inc. Class C Gemini 2.5, but still not up to the level of Gemini 3.0. Sources suggest that Meta's management has even discussed temporarily using Alphabet Inc. Class C Gemini, but no final decision has been made yet.