Technology
Meta opens Muse Spark Open weights, tuned for Apple's Mac Studio hardware
Meta says the model can run locally across linked Mac Studios with about 1TB of combined memory, and its weights are on Hugging Face.
The short version
- Meta unveiled Muse Spark Open, which it calls the most capable US open-weight model to date.[9to5Mac]
- The multimodal model is optimized for Mac Studio with M5 Ultra chips using Apple's MLX framework and is available on Hugging Face.[9to5Mac]
- Meta says two linked 512GB Mac Studios can hold the full model, while Engadget estimates a four-unit 256GB setup costs about $38,000.[9to5Mac · Engadget]
- Apple has not announced pricing or a ship date for the 512GB Mac Studio, and Meta's performance claims rest on its own benchmarks.[Engadget]
Key facts
- Meta unveiled Muse Spark Open and says it is the most capable US open-weight model to date.[9to5Mac]
- Muse Spark Open is a natively multimodal model with 816 billion total parameters, 42 billion active, and a 1 million-token context window.[9to5Mac]
- Meta says Muse Spark Open was optimized for Mac Studio with M5 Ultra using the latest version of Apple's MLX framework.[9to5Mac]
- Meta says Apple's unified memory lets two 512GB Mac Studios hold the full model.[9to5Mac · Engadget]
- Muse Spark Open is available now through Hugging Face.[9to5Mac · Engadget]
- Benchmarks released by Meta suggest the model outperforms GLM 5.3 and Kimi K3 on agentic tasks and visual reasoning.[Engadget]
- Apple has not announced specific pricing or a ship date for the 512GB Mac Studio, only that it will be available in late October.[Engadget]
- Engadget reports that a four-unit 256GB M5 Ultra Mac Studio setup would cost roughly $38,000.[Engadget]
What remains uncertain
- Engadget reports the model as about 800 billion parameters, while Meta's figure is 816 billion total parameters.[9to5Mac · Engadget]
- Performance and benchmark claims come from Meta's own releases, and no independent verification is reported.[Engadget]
- Apple has not confirmed pricing or a ship date for the 512GB Mac Studio, so the hardware cost and availability remain unknown.[Engadget]
- The roughly $38,000 hardware cost is an approximate estimate reported by Engadget, not a confirmed price.[Engadget]
Sources
Outlet counts describe coverage, not independent confirmation. Reports may share a wire service or original source.