Apple and Meta team up to make Muse AI model run on Mac computers

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Tim Cook and Mark Zuckerberg have clashed for years, but with John Ternus taking the reins at Apple, the rivals are finding common ground in artificial intelligence.

Meta and Apple revealed a new collaboration Thursday that will enable developers to easily run Meta's new open-weight AI model on Apple's high-end desktop computers.

The collaboration centers on Muse Spark Open, the most capable open-weight model released under a license that allows for limited commercial use, according to Meta. It's an 816-billion-parameter model using a so-called mixture-of-experts architecture. As an open-weight model, developers can download the technology's parameters, or weights, from the internet and run the model on a wide range of hardware.

Customers will be able to pair between two and four Mac Studio PCs to use Muse Spark to code, analyze video or do other agentic work. The model runs locally, instead of in the cloud, adding a layer of security and saving users money, the companies said.

Thursday's announcement, following months of collaboration, is a sign that the AI boom has shifted historical alliances in Silicon Valley. For years, Apple and Meta regarded each other warily and avoided public partnerships, and the relationship hit rock bottom after Apple introduced privacy changes in 2021 that limited the targeting capabilities of digital ad companies. 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 if the Muse Spark Open collaboration was the start of a deeper relationship.

The new Apple Mac Studio computer and Studio Display are displayed shortly after going on sale at the Apple Store on 5th Avenue in Manhattan, in New York City, New York, March 18, 2022.

Mike Segar | Reuters

Mac Studios aren't cheap though, and this AI model requires the fastest Apple chips and as much memory as possible.

Plus, users will need to buy multiple machines.

Common ground on open source

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