Meta releases 816 billion parameter open-weight multimodal AI model
14 sources · Washington Times · The Decoder · The Verge AI- Boom: Muse Spark Open has 816 billion parameters and handles text, images, video, and audio
- Boom: Meta calls it the most capable US open-weight model released to date
- Neutral: Model runs locally on two M5 Ultra Mac Studios but requires 1TB of RAM
- Boom: Meta and Apple collaborated on the launch despite being longtime rivals
- Neutral: Meta targets Chinese open-weight models Qwen, GLM, and Kimi on benchmarks
The story in full
Meta announced Muse Spark Open on October 15, 2026, describing it as the "most capable US open-weight model to date." The model has 816 billion parameters, processes text, images, video, and audio, supports up to one million tokens of context, and is built on a mixture-of-experts architecture. Meta worked with Apple on the launch, with the model optimized to run locally on two Apple M5 Ultra Mac Studios using the MLX framework, though it requires 1TB of RAM to operate.
Meta positions Muse Spark Open as a direct competitor to open-weight Chinese models including Qwen, GLM, and Kimi, claiming benchmark performance roughly on par with those systems. The Apple partnership is notable given the two companies have historically been rivals. Hugging Face also published a dedicated post welcoming the model, and it appeared on the Hacker News front page the same day.
Analysis
411 wordsOn October 15, 2026, Meta released Muse Spark Open, an 816 billion parameter multimodal model that handles text, images, video, and audio, with a context window of up to one million tokens. Built on a mixture-of-experts architecture, the model is available on Amazon SageMaker JumpStart and can run locally on two Apple M5 Ultra Mac Studios using the MLX framework, though it requires 1TB of RAM to do so. Meta describes it as the most capable US open-weight model released to date, positioning it explicitly against Chinese open-weight systems including Qwen, GLM, and Kimi on benchmark performance.
The Apple partnership is the detail that makes this more than a standard model release. The two companies have long been rivals on privacy, platform control, and hardware ecosystems, so the collaboration drew immediate attention. The arrangement appears to serve both parties, as Techmeme X Chatter noted: Meta gains access to a large base of researchers and developers, while Apple has a new reason to sell high-end Mac hardware. What remains genuinely contested is how open the model actually is, what the license permits, and whether local operation at this scale is realistic for most users given the cost of the required hardware.
The Pro-AI camp frames Muse Spark Open as a milestone in accessible, locally operated AI. Accounts including Mazdak pointed to running agents on personal hardware rather than cloud infrastructure as the direction the industry is heading, and AI & Tech News UK described the release as opening exciting possibilities for developers and researchers. The Anti-AI camp is largely focused on Meta's record rather than the model itself. PJ Onori stated flatly that any Mac pre-shipping a Meta model would prompt them to leave the platform, and Caleb cited Meta's history of harm to children and the spread of disinformation as reasons to distrust the partnership. Five O'Clock Tech added that the release gives users enough to get hooked without enough to build a competitor, pointing to license restrictions. The Middle Ground camp acknowledges the mutual business logic of the deal but notes real limitations: ai-sight reported that the model trails some competitors on coding benchmarks despite its claimed advantages in agentic tasks, and Space Captain Lispegistus flagged a high refusal rate on sensitive queries as a reason for skepticism.
The clearest near-term test will be independent benchmark results comparing Muse Spark Open against Qwen, GLM, and Kimi on coding and reasoning tasks, which would either support or undercut Meta's competitive claims.
What Pro-AI voices are sayingMeta's Muse Spark Open is celebrated as a major leap in open-weight AI, with its local operation on Mac hardware, commercial availability, and freedom from cloud dependency seen as defining features of a new era in accessible AI.
Quote 1 of 13What Anti-AI voices are sayingCritics distrust the Meta-Apple partnership given Meta's history of data misuse and harm to users, and some flag the restrictive license and the $10,000-plus hardware cost as serious barriers. A minority dismisses the model as a repeat of past Meta failures.
Quote 1 of 13What Middle Ground voices are sayingObservers see mutual business logic in the Meta-Apple deal and note the model's competitive agentic performance, but flag a non-fully-open license, known 3D spatial reasoning limitations, and coding benchmarks where rivals still lead.
Quote 1 of 11Add your take
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More Pro-AI reactions (12)
“Meta releases Muse Spark Open, a new SOTA open model.”
Unsloth AI, Bluesky · 17:39 UTC“Meta released Muse Spark Open, an 816B-parameter multimodal MoE model for agentic coding, calling it the most capable US open-weight model.”
Five O'Click Tech, Bluesky · 19:25 UTC“The partnership shows how far the AI race is reshaping even the most adversarial relationships in tech.”
Yahoo Finance, Bluesky · 17:53 UTC“Meta just keeps winning. Ended up teaming up with Apple too!!! Beginning of the Golden Age of Local Superintelligence”
Techmeme X Chatter, Bluesky · 17:38 UTC“Meta is so back! They are finally releasing Meta Muse Spark open weight. Best US open weight model 816B total / 42B active parameters 1M token context window Natively multimodal across text, image, video, audio Love to see!”
Techmeme X Chatter, Bluesky · 17:56 UTC“Very happy to see Muse Spark Open!”
Eric Florenzano, Bluesky · 17:46 UTC“Meta's 816B param Muse Spark is open wieghts 🤯 1M-token context window. And MoE, so likely relatively fast. Now I'm really curious what my cluster can do!”
Techmeme X Chatter, Bluesky · 18:03 UTC“Meta is open sourcing the weights for Muse Spark Open, the most capable US open-weights model to date.”
PyTorch, Bluesky · 17:57 UTC“This move opens up exciting possibilities for developers and researchers...”
AI & Tech News UK, Bluesky · 19:01 UTC“running agents on your own desk instead of renting cloud is where this is heading.”
Mazdak, Bluesky · 18:06 UTC“The agentic race is shifting from training scale to edge deployability.”
Hermes @ Goke, Bluesky · 18:03 UTC“Meta ships Muse Spark Open, its answer to China’s best open-weight models”
davidi, Bluesky · 18:30 UTC
More Anti-AI reactions (12)
“It's a repeat of the Metaverse gamble, just instead of not being able to code basic VR functionality, he can't code a basic chatbot that won't turn creepy.”
SquidRadio, Bluesky, skeptic · 04:42 UTC“love making trillion dollar all-or-nothing gambles like im a plucky startup instead of a core tech sector company”
Sagittarius A*, Bluesky · 04:49 UTC“AI can only do proper good once OpenAI and Anthropic burn to the ground and probably Google and Meta too in Minecraft”
sienna, Bluesky · 18:59 UTC“I'm sure it'll all be fine, after all these are the geniuses who pissed away 80 billion on the metaverse, so they know what they're doing.”
Peter Gordon 🇺🇦, Bluesky, skeptic · 05:59 UTC“Automating the workforce may be the reason why uptake is low too: The majority of us have no employees.”
NaffNaffBobFace, Bluesky · 05:17 UTC“They're giving away enough to get you hooked, not enough to build a competitor.”
Five O'Click Tech, Bluesky · 19:03 UTC“The second Apple pre-ships a Meta LLM on a Mac is the second I’m out.”
PJ Onori, Bluesky · 19:31 UTC“Man apples just trying to get its user base to riot against it. First LG hardware a week or two after Lg dropped spyware firmware Now Meta who has been found harming kids and spreading disinformation casing massacre’s And violating”
Caleb, Bluesky · 18:58 UTC“You would think Apple would know better considering every day is a new data scandal from Meta”
incognitoastronaut.bsky.social, Bluesky · 17:26 UTC“Meta and Muse can go die in a fire for all I care.”
madbodger.bsky.social, Bluesky · 17:26 UTC“if the "muse spark open" doesn't make it behave like someone who thinks they are incapable of being wrong no matter how smart it is it will be a useless model”
ayla, Bluesky · 18:25 UTC“If this is supposed to make it less weird, it's not working.”
The Cleric, Bluesky · 13:03 UTC
More Middle Ground reactions (10)
“Apple could show you in Messages if the person you are chatting with has Muse installed if they are on iOS. I would want to know.”
Joshua Iz, Bluesky · 18:53 UTC“it's substantial refusal rate on "dangerous questions" I'm not convinced this is worth my attention.”
Space Captain Lispegistus 🇪🇺🇧🇬🏴☠️, Bluesky, skeptic · 18:14 UTC“just popping downstairs with a few friends to go ice skating in hell.”
John Philpin, Bluesky · 17:59 UTC“Meta’s Muse Spark Open is an 816B open-weight model that beats US rivals and matches Chinese models on agentic tasks, but its license isn’t fully open.”
The New Stack, Bluesky · 17:30 UTC“It's also a mutually beneficial deal. Meta gets more researchers and developers to use its AI model and Apple gets to sell more Macs.”
Techmeme X Chatter, Bluesky · 18:38 UTC“Is the future of enterprise AI a desktop, not a data centre?”
Ryan Daws, Bluesky · 17:46 UTC“Meta lists 3D spatial reasoning as a known limitation in the Muse Wonder model card, so the benchmark-topping numbers come with a boundary the company itself drew and published.”
yomimonoid.bsky.social, Bluesky · 22:56 UTC“보안과 비용 면에서 유리합니다.”
푸른곰, Bluesky · 17:07 UTC“Muse Wonder Full: not as smart, but better at coding tasks, doesn't have a place in my toolkit.”
Sherveen, Bluesky · 13:42 UTC“Meta udostępniła wagi multimodalnego modelu Muse Spark Open z kontekstem sięgającym miliona tokenów. Firma deklaruje przewagi w zadaniach agentowych, choć w testach kodowania model ustępuje części konkurentów.”
ai-sight.bsky.social, Bluesky · 18:47 UTC
Sources
14 articles from 14 outlets- Washington TimesMeta releases massive AI model that doesn’t need data center
- The DecoderMuse Spark Open is Meta's answer to Qwen, GLM, and Kimi in the open-weight race
- The Verge AIMeta and Apple team up to make Muse AI models run better on Macs
- Hacker News front page (AI)Muse Spark Open
- QuartzMeta and Apple team up to run Muse Spark Open AI model on Macs
- StreetInsiderMeta releases Muse Spark Open, an 816B-parameter AI model
- Breakingthenews.netMeta, Apple team up to bring Muse AI model to Macs
- MacStoriesMeta Releases Muse Spark Open, an Over 800 Billion Parameter Model That Can Run Locally on Multiple M5 Ultra Mac Studios
- EngadgetMeta Built A Huge Open-Weight AI Model For Macs, But You'll Need 1TB Of RAM To Run It
- WSJMeta and Apple, Longtime Foes, Team Up to Put Open-Weight AI on Macs
- Axios"Mommy and daddy" play nice: Apple and Meta team up to bring open-source Muse to Macs
- 9to5MacMeta launches new Muse Spark Open model, optimized to run on Mac Studio
- Hugging Face BlogWelcome Muse Spark Open: open-weight frontier multimodal mixture-of-experts model from Meta
- ManilaShakerMeta Introduces Muse Wonder AI Models
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