Meta Launches New A.I. Model as Global Technology Race Heats Up

Meta on Thursday unveiled a new version of its flagship artificial intelligence model, Muse Spark, in an effort to close the gap with its rivals in the global race to develop the technology.

For the first time, the company will offer a paid version of the service, a departure from its longtime philosophy of giving its A.I. away for free. The paid product opens up a new revenue stream for Meta, which is planning to spend tens of billions of dollars on A.I. this year.

The new model is better at coding than Meta’s previous version of the technology, which the company released in April. On tests that measure writing, reasoning, coding and other tasks, Muse Spark performed at or near the same levels as leading models from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and xAI, according to data shared by the company.

Meta’s product would also be cheaper than other leading models, the company said. Muse Spark costs customers about a fourth what Anthropic’s leading model, Fable, does.

Muse Spark is the first A.I. model developed by Meta Superintelligence Labs, the company’s A.I. division that Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, revamped last year. Along with spending billions on new A.I. researchers to develop models like Muse Spark, Mr. Zuckerberg has pledged to spend $600 billion to build new data centers in the coming years.

The new A.I. division is led by Alexandr Wang, Meta’s 29-year-old chief A.I. officer and the former chief executive of the start-up ScaleAI. Meta released its first image generator developed under Mr. Wang, called Muse Image, on Tuesday. Meta also plans to release a video generator called Muse Video and an even more powerful A.I. model internally called Watermelon in the coming months.

Meta is facing fierce competition in the A.I. race from rival tech firms. Elon Musk’s A.I. company, xAI, on Wednesday released a new A.I. model, and OpenAI released its latest model on Thursday.

Mr. Zuckerberg promoted Meta’s new model on X on Thursday, calling it “strongest at agentic performance, tool use, and computer use.”

“More to come soon,” he added.

Eli Tan covers the technology industry for The Times from San Francisco.