Model Watch · Released

Meta Muse Spark 1.1

Announced Jul 9, 2026Released Jul 9, 2026
What they claimed

Meta Superintelligence Labs' follow-up to Muse Spark, tuned for agentic coding and computer use and explicitly positioned against Anthropic and OpenAI in the coding market. Its release opened the Muse architecture to outside developers through a paid Meta Model API — Meta's first paid model access, a break from the open-weight Llama era. A more powerful model, code-named Watermelon, was disclosed as in training.

What shipped

Available July 9 via the paid Meta Model API, two days after Muse Image, Meta's first image-generation model, shipped free in the Meta AI app, WhatsApp, and Instagram.

The verdict

Reality review pending — we publish the executive verdict after the launch has had time to meet the real world.

Why it matters

Meta has abandoned free-and-open as its AI strategy: Muse is proprietary and monetized through an API, so 'we'll build on Llama because it's free' no longer describes Meta's direction. Enterprises get a fourth credible US vendor in the coding-agent market, but should treat Llama-era licensing assumptions as obsolete.

Sources
  1. Meta announcement
  2. CNBC
  3. VentureBeat