Vote of Confidence: Apple and Meta Have Begun Collaborating on a New AI Model Called Muse for Mac

Meta Platforms, an artificial intelligence developer, and Apple, the maker of the iPhone, announced a partnership on Thursday that will allow users to run Meta’s new AI model with open weights on Apple’s most powerful desktop computers. For Meta, returning to Apple’s infrastructure is an important vote of confidence in its revamped AI strategy, CNBC notes.

Thanks to the collaboration between the two tech giants, users will be able to link two to four Mac Studio computers to use Muse Spark Open for writing code, analyzing video, and performing other agent-based tasks. The model operates locally rather than in the cloud, which enhances data security and reduces costs, the companies said.

Muse Spark Open is, according to Meta, the most powerful open-weight model released under a license that permits limited commercial use. The model has 816 billion parameters.

Many powerful open-source models are too large to run on most personal computers. However, Apple’s Mac Studio provides users with enough memory to make running Muse Spark Open locally a practical possibility, explained Alexander Wang, head of AI at Meta, in an interview with CNBC.

“Together with Apple, we’ve made it possible for cutting-edge agent capabilities to be available right on your desktop for the first time—on the Mac Studio with the Apple M5 Ultra [processor]. So, as you can imagine, we’re very excited about this,” Wang said.

However, Mac Studios aren’t cheap, and running this AI model requires Apple’s most powerful chips and the maximum amount of memory available, according to CNBC. Currently, a Mac Studio with the required M5 Ultra chip and 256 gigabytes of memory costs at least $10,799 in the U.S. And to run Muse Spark Open, users will need to purchase several of these computers at once.

This partnership illustrates how the AI boom is reshaping traditional alliances and rivalries in Silicon Valley, according to CNBC. For many years, Apple and Meta viewed each other with suspicion and avoided public collaboration, the network explains. Relations between the companies soured for good when Apple changed its privacy rules in 2021, limiting companies’ ability to run digital ads and target users. At the same time, Meta lost access to users’ photos without specific permission. In early 2022, Meta estimated that these changes would reduce its annual revenue by approximately $10 billion.

Representatives from Apple and Meta declined to tell CNBC whether the collaboration on Muse Spark Open could mark the beginning of a deeper partnership. However, the channel emphasizes that Meta’s official support for the Muse Spark Open model is already an important vote of confidence in its relaunched AI strategy, which could potentially intensify competition with OpenAI and Anthropic. At the same time, the collaboration may also signal a strengthening of Apple’s position in the AI chip market—a sector that has so far been dominated by Nvidia, CNBC notes.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor