Meta has launched a paid developer version of its Muse Spark AI model, taking direct aim at rivals OpenAI and Anthropic. The company updated the model to Muse Spark 1.1 and, according to multiple reports including Yahoo Tech and qz.com, followed through on an earlier promise to open it up to outside developers.
Meta's pitch is built around cost. According to Kurt Wagner of Bloomberg, Mark Zuckerberg described the pricing as "aggressive and attractive," pegging it at roughly 25% of what OpenAI and Anthropic charge for their models. Bloomberg framed the move plainly: in a crowded market for AI tools, Zuckerberg wants to win on price.
The concrete numbers come from a report published by Yahoo Finance, which says Muse Spark 1.1 is priced at $1.25 per million input tokens and $4.25 per million output tokens, with $20 in free credits for developers to start. (Tokens are the small chunks of text that AI models process; API pricing is typically billed per million of them.)
Several outlets, including The New York Times, cast the launch as another flashpoint in an intensifying global AI race. Crypto Briefing went further, calling Muse Spark Meta's first proprietary AI model with a paid developer tier and describing it as a "sharp pivot" away from the company's open-source roots.
Note that sources differ slightly on naming: Bloomberg refers to a "Meta Model API," while other outlets center on "Muse Spark 1.1."
Why it matters: if Meta can deliver comparable AI at a quarter of competitors' prices, it could pressure the entire industry on cost and reshape how developers choose which models to build on.