Meta’s Muse models reach the AI frontier—and kill any hopes to ‘pace’ it

It looks like Meta’s big AI turnaround is starting to pay off, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is showing no signs of slowing down, despite calls from OpenAI, Anthropic and others arguing that the entire industry should do so.

Meta has reached the “frontier” with the two new models it released this week, Muse Wonder and Muse Wonder Full, Zuckerberg told the Financial Times in an interview.

They build on momentum from last month’s release of Muse, Meta’s personal AI assistant, which rocketed to the top of the Apple App Store, and compelled OpenAI to unveil a rival product, Dots.

Meta’s self-published model benchmarks show its Muse models out-performing other frontier models, such as OpenAI’s GPT-6 and Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5.1, in key areas such as coding and memory.

Two independent AI analysis companies also praised its performance.

One firm, Artificial Analysis, called the models “a material jump in intelligence over previous Meta models,” and another, Vals, found that the Wonder model is number one on cybersecurity tasks, and scores near the top on multiple other benchmarks.

Meta has entered the ring.

The new models will power future upgrades to the Muse assistant, which Meta plans to monetize through subscriptions.

While anyone can access a free, basic version of Muse, more capable versions require a $20/month or $100/month plan.

Wall Street, at least,is buying it, and is now bullish on Meta’s ability to drive revenue through Muse, Reuters reports .

That’s important because the company needs to be able to justify its planned $145 billion in capital spending on compute in 2026, a figure that is up 101% from 2025.

The success of Muse took some by surprise, including Bill Nguyen, a veteran Silicon Valley entrepreneur and co-founder of Olive.is.

“They caught up way faster than I thought.

Like overnight,” Nguyen told Fortune .