Meta has released Muse Spark Open, an 816-billion-parameter AI model, enabling local execution on Apple M5 Ultra Mac Studios. The collaboration marks a shift in relations between the two tech giants.
Meta has released Muse Spark Open, an open-weight artificial intelligence model designed to run locally on high-end Apple computers. The release marks a significant collaboration between Meta and Apple, two companies that have historically competed over privacy standards and computing platforms.
Muse Spark Open is described by Meta as the most powerful U.S.-developed open-weight AI model available. According to a company statement, the model features an 816-billion-parameter sparse mixture-of-experts architecture that activates approximately 42 billion parameters per token. It is similar to the previously released Muse Spark 1.3.
The model is available for free download under the Muse Model License, which includes limited commercial terms allowing many developers to use it at no cost. Weights are accessible through major cloud and developer platforms, including:
Additionally, the model can be accessed via API platforms such as Baseten, Fireworks AI, Groq, Modal, Nebius, OpenRouter, and Together AI.
A key feature of Muse Spark Open is its ability to run locally on Apple hardware. Meta worked with Apple to demonstrate the model running across two or four connected Mac Studios powered by Apple's M5 Ultra chips, utilizing Apple's MLX framework. Meta says this brings agentic capabilities to the desktop for the first time on these specific machines.
Alexandr Wang, Meta's AI chief, stated that the companies have been working together for several months. He noted that Daniel Gross, a former Apple executive now at Meta, played a key role in facilitating the partnership. "I think he played a really big role in kind of getting the two companies to work nicely together," Wang said.
The collaboration highlights how the AI race is reshaping relationships in the technology sector. While Apple and Meta continue to compete in devices and computing, the move allows Apple to showcase the capabilities of its most powerful computers and Meta to distribute its models widely. Because the model runs locally, Meta does not receive users' prompts or other information, addressing long-standing privacy concerns between the two firms.
"Meta has no control or visibility to any of that," Wang said regarding how developers use the model. He added, "Where it makes sense to collaborate and partner, we want to be able to do so."
The release of Muse Spark Open provides a proof of concept for running large-scale AI models on personal computers rather than relying solely on cloud servers or Nvidia GPUs. This shift could alter the economics of AI development by offering companies more control and alternatives to proprietary models. The partnership also signals a potential détente between Apple and Meta, whose leaders, Tim Cook and Mark Zuckerberg, have previously clashed over privacy and business models.
Sources
This article was drafted with AI assistance and checked against the sources above. Company claims are reported as claims. Cover image is AI-generated.
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