Apple and Meta Team Up So Muse Spark Open AI Can Run Across High-End Mac Studios

CUPERTINO / MENLO PARK, Oct. 15 (TodayViralUSA) — Apple and Meta are teaming up so developers can run Meta’s Muse Spark Open model locally across high-end Mac Studio desktops — an unlikely alliance between longtime Silicon Valley rivals as demand grows for on-device AI that stays off the cloud.

Meta described Muse Spark Open as its most capable open-weight model released under a license that allows limited commercial use: an 816-billion-parameter mixture-of-experts system that developers can download and run on their own hardware. The companies said customers can link two to four Mac Studio machines to use the model for coding, video analysis and other agent-style work.

Local AI, expensive hardware

Running the model on-desk rather than in a data center is meant to improve privacy and cut cloud bills, Meta AI chief Alexandr Wang told CNBC. Meta has tuned Muse Spark Open for Apple silicon and published guidance for Apple’s MLX framework to split large open models across multiple machines over Thunderbolt.

The setup is not cheap. A Mac Studio with the required M5 Ultra chip and 256GB of memory starts at about $10,799, CNBC reported, with a 512GB configuration expected later this month — and users need more than one machine.

Rivals find common ground

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted that Muse Spark Open “runs great on new Mac Studios thanks to work with” Apple CEO John Ternus. Ternus replied that Mac Studio “keeps pushing the boundaries of on-device AI.”

The partnership lands after years of public tension under Tim Cook, including privacy fights that Meta once said cost it about $10 billion in annual revenue. Ternus succeeded Cook last month. Wang said much of the old animosity predates his tenure and pointed to Meta’s hiring of former Apple AI director Daniel Gross as a bridge.

Open weights in a crowded race

Wang framed the release as good enough to draw developers who may later scale onto Meta’s stronger proprietary models, including Muse Wonder. Apple already works with OpenAI on Siri and has a separate deal to use Google Gemini in Apple Intelligence — while also suing OpenAI over alleged trade-secret theft, a claim OpenAI denies.

For Meta, the Mac collaboration is a showcase for open-weight distribution after a strategic pivot under Wang. For Apple, it is a public bet that its desktop chips can host frontier-scale models that once lived only in the cloud.