It may sound like a trip through the produce aisle, but leading AI companies have something much more important on their lists.
Meta, OpenAI, and Google have all relied on food-related names for their sometimes secretive plans for future AI models. Thinking with your stomach is nothing new for Silicon Valley, just look at the assortment of desserts Android assembled over the years before Google had its fill.
Here is a look at the mouthwatering and just plain goofy names AI and tech companies are using
Meta: Avocado
Meta has codenamed its future AI frontier model “avocado,” per a CNBC report. Guac usually costs extra, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s AI pivot has not come cheap. Meta plans to spend more than $70 billion this year on AI infrastructure, which is on top of $14 billion investment Meta made in Scale AI and to poach its founder, Alexandr Wang.
OpenAI: Garlic
OpenAI has hit a rough patch, feeling the heat from Google’s advances and stumbling with a series of missteps. So perhaps it was time to spice things up. The ChatGPT maker has codenamed its new large language model “garlic,” according to The Information. Garlic is separate from another LLM OpenAI is developing, codenamed “Shallotpeat.”
Google: Nano Banana
Google appears to have loved a codename so much that it made it public. Google’s AI image generator in Gemini is named Nano Banana Pro, which it released on November 20. Before then, Google had internally called the model nano-banana, though they had not publicly disclosed their zany choice.
Past codenames
The clearance section offers a wide selection of great names. OpenAI might have one of the best all-time codenames with “strawberry,” which it used to refer to its o1 model. The name was likely a play on the viral struggle of AI models to correctly identify the number of Rs in the fruit. Before Strawberry, OpenAI had a secretive project named Q*.
Earlier this year, Elon Musk’s xAI had a sweet tooth when it codenamed an early testing version of Grok-3 “chocolate.”
Mistral AI, the France-based startup, went in a completely opposite direction with “Jaguar,” its codename for a testing model.
And Anthropic named its family of models Opus, Sonnett, and Hakiu, a trio of three different types of compositions.
