Apple and Meta are working together so developers can run Meta's 816-billion-parameter Muse Spark Open model locally on high-end Mac Studio computers. The pairing is unusual for two longtime rivals, and the hardware is expensive.
Apple and Meta revealed a collaboration on Thursday that lets developers run Meta's new open-weight AI model on Apple's high-end desktop computers. The model, Muse Spark Open, is an 816-billion-parameter system built on a mixture-of-experts architecture, according to CNBC.
What developers get
Customers will be able to pair between two and four Mac Studio PCs to code, analyze video or do other agentic work. The companies said the model runs locally instead of in the cloud, which adds a layer of security and saves users money.
Meta's AI chief Alexandr Wang said many powerful open-weight models are too big for most personal computers. Mac Studios, he said, make enough memory available to make running Muse Spark Open practical. Crypto Briefing reports that the model activates 42 billion parameters during inference and has a context window of one million tokens.
The price of running it locally
The hardware is costly. A Mac Studio with the required M5 Ultra chip and 256GB of memory costs at least $10,799, and a version with 512GB of RAM will be released later this month. Users also need to buy multiple machines.
Rivals find common ground
Apple and Meta haven't struck a public partnership since 2017, when Apple removed system-level Facebook integration from the iPhone. The relationship worsened after Apple introduced privacy changes in 2021, and Meta estimated in early 2022 that the change would cut its revenue that year by $10 billion.
Representatives from Apple and Meta declined to say whether the project is the start of a deeper relationship. Crypto Briefing adds that the companies have not announced plans to integrate Muse Spark Open into Apple Intelligence.
Wang pointed to Daniel Gross, an AI researcher and former Apple director now on his team, as a reason for the collaboration. CNBC says the move could also signal Apple's growing strength in AI chips, a market Nvidia has dominated so far.
Sources: CNBC, Crypto Briefing
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