Meta releases first-ever AI model from one of its highest-paid teams, after spending billions; calls it first step on path to personal...

Mark Zuckerberg's Meta has released Muse Spark, the company's first-ever artificial model from one of its highest-paid teams, Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL). Mark Zuckerberg assembled its Superintelligence Labs team last year under Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang.

In June 2025, Facebook founder Zuckerberg hired Wang as part of a $14 billion investment into Scale AI after a series of setbacks that reportedly left him frustrated that the company wasn’t keeping pace with competitors like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. Zuckerberg has since spent billions on AI talent and committed tens of billions more on infrastructure like data centers to catch up. "Today we're releasing muse spark, the first model from MSL.

nine months ago we rebuilt our ai stack from scratch. new infrastructure, new architecture, new data pipelines. muse spark is the result of that work, and now it powers Meta AI," said Wang in a social media post. "Muse Spark is the first model in our new Muse series — a deliberate and scientific approach to model scaling where each generation validates and builds on the last before we go bigger. This initial model is small and fast by design, yet capable enough to reason through complex questions in science, math, and health.

It is a powerful foundation, and the next generation is already in development. Muse Spark now powers the Meta AI assistant in the Meta AI app and meta.ai, built to support complex reasoning and multimodal tasks," said the company in a blog post.

Shengjia Zhao, chief scientist at Meta MSL, wrote, "Excited to share what we’ve been building at Meta Superintelligence Labs! We just released Muse Spark, our first AI model.

It's a natively multimodal reasoning model and the first step on our path to personal superintelligence. We've overhauled our entire stack to support scaling, and this is just the beginning."Meta has tried to keep its AI division nimble, giving researchers autonomy and minimizing its typical management-heavy organizational structure, a company executive said. Wang has around 100 direct reportees.

What is Meta Muse Spark

Muse Spark can help users with everyday tasks such as calculating the calories in a meal from a photo or superimposing an image of a mug on a shelf to see how it looks.

Meta also released Contemplating mode, which runs multiple agents at one time to boost reasoning power. For instance, while planning a family vacation for a user, one agent can draft a travel itinerary and the other can look up kid-friendly activities.Muse Spark will power the Meta AI chatbot, The company is betting that applying AI to everyday personal tasks will help boost engagement with the more than 3.5 billion users across its social media platforms, potentially giving it an edge over rivals with a smaller reach.

Like its competitors, Muse Spark offers several levels of reasoning: “Instant” mode, “Thinking” mode and “Contemplating” mode — the last providing research-grade responses.

The Meta executive said the model is good at answering questions about science, health and math, but weaker at coding.Reportedly known internally as Avocado during development, Muse Spark was built over nine months and is seen by executives as a refresh of Meta’s AI strategy, which was previously focused on its open-source Llama models.

In a change from the company’s prior open-source strategy, Muse Spark is a closed model, meaning that its design and code won’t be made public. One of the reasons for this is said to be MSL head Wang himself.

Wang is a proponent of closed models. Muse Spark was trained using several third-party open-source models, including Qwen from the Chinese tech giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., as well as ones from OpenAI and Google. The revamped Meta AI with Muse Spark will also contain a Shopping mode that the company said will be able to help people buy clothes or decorate rooms. “Shopping mode draws from the styling inspiration and brand storytelling already happening across our apps, surfacing ideas from the creators and communities people already follow,” Meta said.

Meta Muse Spark availability

Muse Spark model will initially be available on Meta AI app and website.

In the coming weeks, it will replace the existing Llama models powering chatbots on WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and Meta's collection of smart glasses. The Meta AI chatbot will remain free for users, but the company is reportedly considering implementing subscription fees in the future."This initial model is small and fast by design, yet capable enough to reason through complex questions in science, math, and health.

It is a powerful foundation, and the next generation is already in development," the company said in a blog post.Meta did not disclose the model's size, a key measure typically used to compare an AI system's computing power with rivals.

Meta playing catch-up

While Meta has used advancements in generative AI and its own investments in the technology to boost its advertising business and improve efficiencies across the company, the company is yet to crack the AI model market in a significant way, and its top competitors in the space zoom have zoomed ahead.

OpenAI and Anthropic are now collectively valued at over $1 trillion, and Google’s Gemini technology and services are rapidly gaining traction, growing fastest in the market.

According to a report in Bloomberg, a Meta executive acknowledged that Muse Spark wasn’t as capable in some areas as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude or Google’s Gemini, but said that it was early in the company’s execution. The model is “an early data point on our trajectory,” with several larger models in development, Meta said in a blog post.