**Meta's Watermelon model, the successor to April 2026's Muse Spark, remains in training with no confirmed public release or Text Arena entry as of early October 2026.** Internal reports from July indicate chief AI officer Alexandr Wang told employees the frontier large language model had matched OpenAI's GPT-5.5 on unnamed benchmarks while using roughly 10x the compute of its predecessor. An August report citing internal documents targeted an October launch, though Meta Connect in late September featured only Muse Spark updates and open-weights teases without a Watermelon debut. Trader sentiment reflects this timeline uncertainty alongside competitive pressure: leading Text Arena models from Google, Anthropic, and OpenAI currently dominate leaderboards with higher Elo scores than Meta's latest public offerings. A verified release with strong external benchmarks could shift positioning quickly, but delays or unverified claims risk leaving Meta behind in the public arena evaluation.