The Verge AI · 10/16/2026, 02:15:36

Meta and Apple Optimize Muse Spark Open for Dual M5 Ultra Mac Studios via MLX

By Jay Peters
68AI Score
Executive Summary

Meta released Muse Spark Open, claiming it is the most capable US open-weight model to date. Through collaboration with Apple and optimization using the latest MLX framework, the model achieves efficient local inference on two M5 Ultra Mac Studios, marking a significant milestone in Apple Silicon's high-end LLM deployment capabilities.

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Meta and Apple’s CEOs are publicly supporting each company’s work on Muse Spark Open.

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The new Muse Spark Open AI model can work on M5 Ultra Mac Studios. Photo: Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Meta announced the Muse Spark Open AI model today, claiming that it’s the “most capable US open-weight model to date.” But the company also says that it’s the “the first model in its class” that can “run on your desktop using two Apple M5 Ultra Mac Studios with the latest MLX framework.”

Meta and Apple, typically rivals, worked together on the launch and are publicly supporting each other.

“Muse Spark Open -- weights releasing today -- runs great on new Mac Studios thanks to work with @johnternus and Apple,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on X.

“Congrats to the team!” new Apple CEO John Ternus said in a reply. “Amazing to run a model of Muse Spark Open’s caliber and scale this efficiently, right from your desk. Mac Studio keeps pushing the boundaries of on-device AI!”

“We’re excited for mommy and daddy to be playing nice again,” Meta chief AI officer Alexandr Wang said to Axios, who also noted that the companies have been collaborating over several months.

The new model is a “natively multimodal model” with 816 billion total parameters that “excels at long-horizon tasks, complex software engineering, and multi-step reasoning,” according to Meta. Apple also published a new technical post about MLX, an “array framework” for ML tasks on Apple Silicon, Muse Spark Open, and two other open models.

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