It may sound like a trip through the produce aisle, but the big AI companies have something far more important on their list.
OpenAI, Meta, and Google have all relied on food-related names in their secret plans for future AI models. OpenAI even named its highly anticipated advanced chip after Pepper.
Thinking with your gut is nothing new to Silicon Valley. Before Google gets full, take a look at the assortment of desserts Android has amassed over the years.
Here’s a look at some mouth-watering and just plain goofy names used by AI and technology companies.
OpenAI: Jalapeno
When you take on Nvidia, things are bound to get tough.
OpenAI announced on June 24 that its first advanced chip, developed in collaboration with Broadcom, is called “Jalapeño.”
“Chips are the foundation of the AI economy,” OpenAI said in a statement. “Building our own platform extends our full-stack platform from products to models to infrastructure, helping us scale intelligence, serve more people, and expand access to AI.”
We designed and built the first AI chip, Jalapeño.
Designed from the ground up by OpenAI and brought into production by @Broadcom, Jalapeño is purpose-built for LLM workloads that power ChatGPT, Codex, APIs, and future agent products.
Chips are the basis of AI… pic.twitter.com/mHU7DaMMTi
— OpenAI (@OpenAI) June 24, 2026
garlic
According to The Information, the creators of ChatGPT codenamed their new large-scale language model “Garlic.” Garlic is separate from another LLM (codenamed “Shallotpeat”) being developed by OpenAI.
Google: nanobanana
Google seemed to like the codename so much that they made it public. Google’s AI image generator on Gemini is named Nano Banana Pro and was released on November 20, 2025. Until then, Google had been internally calling the model the Nanobanana, but hadn’t publicly announced its strange choice.
Meta: Avocado
According to a report from CNBC, Meta has codenamed its future AI frontier model “avocado.” CEO Mark Zuckerberg didn’t stick to the food theme.
Meta SuperIntelligence Labs named this public model “Muse Spark.”
Muse Spark is the first model Meta has released since the social networking giant spent billions of dollars overhauling its AI strategy, including a $14 billion investment in Scale AI, and hired co-founder Alexandr Wang to lead the division.
Past codenames are derived from fruits and vegetables.
Our clearance section offers a wide selection of great names.
OpenAI may have one of the best codenames of all time: “Strawberry”, which it used to refer to its o1 model. The name is thought to be a play on the AI model’s fight against a virus that accurately identifies the number of R’s in a fruit. Before Strawberry, OpenAI had a secret project called Q*.
In 2025, Elon Musk’s xAI had a sweet tooth when it codenamed an early test version of Grok-3 “Chocolate.”
France-based startup Mistral AI went in the exact opposite direction with its test model, codenamed “Jaguar.”
And Anthropic has named its family of models Opus, Sonnett, and Hakiu, a trio of three different types of configurations. Recently, Mythos and Fable were added, but the public availability of these models has been complicated.