Meta's Watermelon model, the successor to its Muse Spark family (internally codenamed Avocado), remains in training with leadership claiming parity to OpenAI's GPT-5.5 on internal benchmarks via roughly 10x more compute. No launch occurred at Meta Connect in late September, aligning with an August-reported internal target for an October 2026 public release. Traders are watching for confirmed rollout timing, open-weight availability, or integration into Meta AI products, as these would directly influence any Text Arena benchmark debut. Recent executive statements emphasize ongoing coding and agentic improvements in the current Muse Spark line while positioning Watermelon as the next major scaling step in Meta's frontier push.