Meta AI unveils new Muse Spark update to rival GPT-5.5 with sharper coding and agentic capabilities

Meta's AI chief says new Muse Spark update will sharpen coding, agentic AI

Alexandr Wang said the upcoming Muse Spark update will significantly improve coding and agentic capabilities, while analysts say the model could give enterprises a lower-cost alternative to OpenAI and Anthropic. Meta is set to launch a new Muse Spark model with stronger coding and agentic capabilities, as Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang touted the update as a step toward closing the gap with rival AI platforms and expanding the company's enterprise AI ambitions. "..Our next Muse Spark update is coming soon. Big improvements in coding and agentic capabilities to be more competitive with other leading models," Wang wrote in a post on X in an attempt to clarify CEO Mark Zuckerberg's comments about the slow progress in AI agent development made during a company townhall. In the same townhall, Wang said that the next Muse Spark update, codenamed Watermelon, which uses far more compute than its predecessor, has already caught up with OpenAI's flagship GPT 5.5 model, according to a Business Insider report that cited anonymous sources.

Meta to release new AI model with advanced coding capabilities 'soon'

Meta to release new AI model with advanced coding capabilities 'soon' Meta Platforms Inc. is gearing up to release a new version of its flagship Muse Spark artificial intelligence model. Alexandr Wang, the company's Chief AI Officer, wrote on X today that the update will roll out "soon." The announcement came a few hours after Business Insider reported that the new algorithm is competitive with GPT-5.5 across several "closely followed" AI benchmarks. The publication's sources didn't name the benchmarks. Practically all frontier model announcements include results from SWE-Bench Pro, a benchmark used to evaluate AI systems' coding capabilities. The original version of Muse Spark scored 52.5% on the test. GPT-5.5, the OpenAI Group PBC model that Meta's new algorithm reportedly matches, reached 58.6%. GPT-5.5 also outperformed Muse Spark on another popular coding benchmark called Terminal-Bench 2.0. Wang stated on X that Meta's upcoming model is significantly more adept at coding than Muse Spark. He added that it's also better at powering AI agents. Muse Spark includes a "contemplating mode" that uses AI agents to improve the quality of prompt responses. During its internal testing, Meta had the model complete a benchmark called HLE with and without the feature. Muse Spark scored 8% higher when contemplating mode was enabled. An X user asked Wang when Meta would launch a model that can match the coding capabilities of Anthropic PBC's Claude Opus 4.8. The executive responded by stating it will happen "pretty soon." Claude Opus 4.8 can perform some coding tasks significantly better than both Muse Spark and GPT-5.5. It scored 69.2% on SWE-Bench Pro, or 10.2% higher than OpenAI's flagship model. However, it fell behind GPT-5.5 on Terminal-Bench 2.0. The improved output quality of Meta's new model reportedly comes at the expense of increased infrastructure use. According to Business Insider, the algorithm uses an "order of magnitude" more computing capacity than Muse Spark. Meta's push to improve the coding capabilities of its AI models suggests it may be planning to make them accessible to external developers. On Wednesday, Bloomberg reported that the Facebook parent is considering launching an AI infrastructure service. Executives are reportedly debating whether Meta should offer raw computing capacity or hosted AI models. Taking on existing AI development tools such as Claude Code will require Meta to build more than just coding-optimized AI models. Claude Code offers integrations with popular developer tools, a desktop app and customization features. Users can also configure it to repeat a task at specific time intervals. Coding is not the only use case to which Meta could apply its planned Muse Spark successor. Anthropic offers Claude Code alongside Claude Cowork, a productivity tool geared towards non-technical professionals. The latter offering includes several vertical-specific feature bundles geared towards industries such as the healthcare and financial sectors.