Meta

Updated August 2026

Meta is the company behind Meta AI and the Llama open-weight models, and the owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. In 2025–2026 it spent over $14 billion to bring in Alexandr Wang and form Meta Superintelligence Labs, lost chief AI scientist Yann LeCun, and shipped its first proprietary flagship, Muse Spark — a sharp pivot from its open-source-first past toward a centralised bet on superintelligence.

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Meta is the company behind Meta AI — the assistant built into WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and Messenger, with over 1 billion monthly users — and the Llama open-weight models that became the most widely deployed open LLMs in history. In 2025 it reset its entire AI strategy: Mark Zuckerberg spent over $14 billion to take a large stake in Scale AI and install its founder Alexandr Wang atop a new Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL), then in April 2026 shipped Muse Spark, MSL’s first model — and, unlike Llama, a proprietary one.

That pivot is the story. Meta is moving from open-source champion to a centralised, capital-intensive bet on “superintelligence,” backed by $125–145 billion of 2026 capital expenditure and data-centre projects (Prometheus, Hyperion) measured in gigawatts. The reset has been turbulent: chief AI scientist Yann LeCun left after 12 years, openly criticising both the LLM-first direction and Wang’s leadership, and Meta still trails OpenAI, Anthropic and Google at the model frontier. Its enduring advantage is distribution — AI woven into apps used by billions, funded by the most profitable advertising business in tech.

Quick facts

History: from FAIR to Meta Superintelligence Labs

Meta (then Facebook) founded FAIR (Fundamental AI Research) in 2013 under Yann LeCun, one of the “godfathers of deep learning,” and became a pillar of open AI research — releasing PyTorch, which became the dominant deep-learning framework, and later the Llama models, whose open weights seeded a vast ecosystem of fine-tunes and startups.

By 2025, Zuckerberg concluded Meta was falling behind at the frontier. After the Llama 4 release in 2025 underwhelmed — LeCun later alleged the GenAI team had “fudged” its benchmark results, costing it Zuckerberg’s confidence — Meta overhauled its AI organisation around a new goal: building “personal superintelligence.”

The 2025 reorganisation and talent war

In mid-2025 Meta made one of the most aggressive talent moves in tech history. It invested over $14 billion for a large minority stake in Scale AI and brought in its 28-year-old co-founder Alexandr Wang, who on 30 June 2025 became Chief AI Officer leading the new Meta Superintelligence Labs, with former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman running AI products. Meta paired this with an extraordinary hiring spree, offering very large packages to poach researchers from rival labs.

The reset cost it its most famous researcher. Yann LeCun left Meta in November 2025 after 12 years, unwilling to report to Wang and convinced that large language models are a dead end versus the “world models” he favours; by March 2026 his new venture, AMI Labs, had raised about $1.03 billion at a $3.5 billion valuation (StartupHub). LeCun publicly called Wang “young and inexperienced,” and reports point to internal tension between Zuckerberg and Wang — a sign of how unsettled the new structure remains.

Models: Muse Spark, and the pivot that partly reversed

Meta’s lineup now spans a proprietary flagship, a new open-weights model, and the older Llama line.

Muse Spark, launched on 8 April 2026 and spearheaded by Wang, was the clearest signal of the strategy change: Meta describes it as “small and fast by design,” natively multimodal, and it replaced Llama as the engine behind Meta AI (CNBC). Crucially, Muse Spark is proprietary — a deliberate break from Llama’s open-weights approach. On our best AI models ranking it sits in the Strong tier rather than at the frontier: a capable first-generation model that trails the leaders on the hardest benchmarks. Image generation in Meta’s apps runs on Meta’s own “Imagine” models, now driven by Muse Spark.

Then Meta partly reversed the reversal. On 5 August 2026 it shipped Muse Spark 1.2 alongside Muse Code, a terminal-based coding agent, and added a $0.10/$0.20 data-contributor API tier — a twelfth of the $1.25/$4.25 standard rate, in exchange for permission to use your prompts and outputs to improve Meta products. Five days later, on 10 August, it released Muse Glimmer: a 30-billion-parameter model distilled from 1.2 and published under Apache 2.0, an OSI-approved licence with no revenue cap and no monthly-active-user ceiling — more permissive than any Llama licence Meta ever used. Zuckerberg framed it directly: “Rather than centralizing superintelligence, we should distribute it widely and give every person the ability to direct it” (Engadget).

How much this undoes the pivot depends on what comes next. Glimmer is a distillation, not the flagship, and at 30B it is aimed at enthusiasts and small-to-medium businesses rather than at the top of the open field. Meta has said open weights for Muse Spark 1.2 itself are coming; until they land, Meta’s best model remains closed and metered.

Products and ecosystem

• Meta AI — the assistant inside WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, Messenger and Threads, plus a standalone app and meta.ai; over 1 billion monthly users, free, with optional Meta One subscriptions in testing.
• AI glasses — Ray-Ban and Oakley Meta glasses with on-device assistance and live, camera-based “live AI.”
• Vibes — a feed of short, AI-generated videos in the Meta AI app, cross-posting to Instagram and Facebook.
• Llama / llama.com — open-weight models and developer docs for self-hosting and fine-tuning.
• Business AI — AI agents for advertising, business messaging and customer chat across Meta’s platforms — the route most tied to revenue.
• AI in the core apps — ranking, recommendations and ad targeting across Facebook and Instagram, where AI most directly drives the business.

Business and financials

Meta is overwhelmingly an advertising company, and that business funds the AI build-out. In Q1 2026 it reported $56.3 billion in revenue and $26.8 billion in net income (DCD). It guided 2026 capital expenditure up to $125–145 billion, the bulk of it AI infrastructure: Meta runs more than 30 data centres and is building gigawatt-scale clusters, including the Prometheus supercluster (2026) and the Manhattan-sized Hyperion, with Zuckerberg talking of “tens of gigawatts this decade.” He has also floated opening a Meta cloud business to monetise that capacity.

Leadership

• Mark Zuckerberg — Founder, Chairman and CEO of Meta Platforms.
• Alexandr Wang — Chief AI Officer, leading Meta Superintelligence Labs (former Scale AI co-founder).
• Nat Friedman — leading AI products (former GitHub CEO).
• Chris Cox — Chief Product Officer.
• Susan Li — Chief Financial Officer.

Yann LeCun, Meta’s long-time Chief AI Scientist and FAIR founder, departed in November 2025.

Competition and market position

Meta competes with OpenAI, Anthropic and Google at the model frontier, and with the open-weight field (DeepSeek, Alibaba’s Qwen, Mistral) where Llama once led. Its singular advantage is distribution: Meta AI reaches billions through apps people already use daily, with no need to win a new audience. Its disadvantages are that its flagship is not yet frontier-class, that the open-weight lead it built with Llama has eroded, and that its AI org is mid-reset with senior departures and reported internal friction.

The deeper logic is that Meta’s biggest AI payoff may not be a chatbot at all but better ad targeting, recommendations and engagement across Facebook and Instagram — where even small gains translate into billions in advertising revenue.

Controversies

• The open-source reversal — and partial U-turn. Muse Spark being proprietary marked a retreat from the open-weights philosophy Meta built its AI reputation on, drawing sustained criticism that it was abandoning the ecosystem it cultivated. Muse Glimmer (10 August 2026) answered some of that with a genuinely permissive Apache 2.0 licence — but it is a 30B distillation, not the flagship, and critics called it too small to contest open-model leadership.
• The talent war and culture clash. The $14 billion Scale AI move, the huge poaching packages, LeCun’s exit and his criticism of Wang — plus reports of Zuckerberg–Wang tension — paint a picture of an expensive, unsettled reorganisation.
• Llama 4 benchmark dispute. LeCun’s claim that the GenAI team “fudged” Llama 4 results is a serious credibility allegation against Meta’s prior model work.
• Privacy and ad personalisation. Meta AI conversations feed ad personalisation in many regions, and the 2025 Discover-feed episode exposed user chats — a far weaker privacy posture than enterprise-focused rivals (see the Meta AI page).
• Capex scale. $125–145 billion of spending has made investors more demanding about AI returns.

Recent developments (2026)

• Muse Spark (8 April 2026) became Meta Superintelligence Labs’ first model and replaced Llama as the Meta AI engine — Meta’s first proprietary flagship. Muse Spark 1.1 (9 July) added agentic tool use, a 1M-token context and the first metered Meta Model API; Muse Spark 1.2 (5 August) added the Muse Code terminal agent and a $0.10/$0.20 data-contributor pricing tier.
• Muse Glimmer (10 August 2026) marked Meta’s return to open weights — a 30B model distilled from Muse Spark 1.2 under Apache 2.0, the most permissive licence Meta has ever used, with open weights for Muse Spark 1.2 itself promised to follow.
• Capex raised to $125–145 billion for 2026, with Prometheus and Hyperion data-centre clusters scaling up.
• Yann LeCun’s AMI Labs raised ~$1.03 billion (March 2026) after his late-2025 departure.
• Q1 2026 earnings beat, with $56.3 billion revenue, even as capex concerns weighed on the stock.
• Reported tension between Zuckerberg and Wang kept the new AI leadership in the headlines.

Where Meta excels

• Distribution. Meta AI reaches over a billion people through WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and Messenger — unmatched consumer reach.
• Advertising integration. AI improvements flow straight into the most profitable ad business in tech.
• Capital and compute. A profitable core funds gigawatt-scale data centres few can match.
• Open-weight legacy. Llama seeded the open ecosystem, and Meta retains deep research talent and tooling (PyTorch).

Where Meta falls short

• Frontier capability. Muse Spark is capable but trails Claude, GPT-5.5 and Gemini on the hardest benchmarks.
• Strategic whiplash. The open-to-proprietary pivot and leadership upheaval have unsettled both its researchers and its developer ecosystem.
• Privacy posture. Consumer-data and ad-personalisation practices make Meta AI a poor fit for sensitive or regulated work.
• Execution risk. A 28-year-old chief AI officer, senior departures and internal friction raise questions about whether the reset will deliver.

Developer resources

Meta’s open models live at llama.com and on Hugging Face, where the Llama family is available under Meta’s community licence for self-hosting and fine-tuning, alongside the PyTorch framework Meta open-sourced and still stewards. Muse Spark, by contrast, is proprietary and offered in private preview via API to select partners. Developer documentation is at llama.com/docs; platform status is at metastatus.com.

Frequently asked questions

What is Meta Superintelligence Labs?

Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL) is the AI organisation Mark Zuckerberg created on 30 June 2025 to pursue “personal superintelligence.” It is led by Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang — the Scale AI co-founder Meta brought in via a $14 billion-plus deal — with Nat Friedman leading AI products. MSL shipped its first model, Muse Spark, in April 2026.

What is Meta’s latest AI model?

Muse Glimmer, released on 10 August 2026, is Meta’s newest model — a 30B open-weights model under Apache 2.0, distilled from Muse Spark 1.2 and built to run local agents on a single consumer GPU. Meta’s most capable model remains Muse Spark 1.2 (5 August 2026), the proprietary flagship behind Meta AI, available to developers through the metered Meta Model API.

Is Meta still open source?

More than it was. Meta pivoted away from open weights in April 2026 when it made Muse Spark proprietary — but on 10 August 2026 it released Muse Glimmer under Apache 2.0, an OSI-approved licence with no revenue or user cap, making it more permissive than any Llama model. Meta still publishes Llama and stewards PyTorch, and says open weights for Muse Spark 1.2 are coming. The honest position: its best model is still closed and metered, but its open-source commitment is no longer only historical.

Why did Yann LeCun leave Meta?

LeCun, Meta’s Chief AI Scientist and FAIR’s founder, left in November 2025 after 12 years. He objected to reporting to Alexandr Wang and disagreed with Meta’s LLM-first direction, favouring “world models” instead. He has since raised about $1.03 billion for a new venture, AMI Labs.

How many people use Meta AI?

Meta last reported over 1 billion monthly active users for Meta AI across its apps. Reach comes from being built into WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and Messenger, though active engagement is lower than that headline figure. See the Meta AI page for detail.

Is Meta AI free?

Yes. Meta AI is free across Meta’s apps and the standalone app, including image generation and Vibes video. Optional Meta One AI subscriptions ($7.99–19.99/month) entered limited testing in 2026, but the core assistant remains free.

Models

Apps

• Meta AI