Meta and Apple have partnered to enable the Muse Spark Open AI model to run locally on Apple’s high-end Mac Studio desktop computers.

Meta has released Muse Spark Open, an 816-billion-parameter open-weight AI model, in collaboration with Apple. The partnership allows developers to run the model locally on Mac Studio computers using Apple’s MLX framework. This development marks a shift in the relationship between the two companies, which have historically been rivals in the technology sector.

Technical Capabilities and Hardware Requirements

Meta describes Muse Spark Open as a natively multimodal model that excels at complex software engineering, long-horizon tasks, and multi-step reasoning. Built with a mixture-of-experts architecture, the model is designed to run locally rather than in the cloud, which the companies state provides increased security and cost savings for users. To operate the model, developers can pair between two and four Mac Studio PCs, utilizing the memory capacity provided by Apple Silicon.

Strategic Collaboration Between Rivals

The project follows months of collaboration between Meta and Apple, a partnership that contrasts with years of public tension between the two firms. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Apple CEO John Ternus publicly acknowledged the joint effort on social media, with Ternus noting the efficiency of running a model of this scale on a desktop. While the companies are working together on this AI integration, representatives declined to comment on whether this project signals a broader, long-term partnership.