Meta has found its footing on AI. Its rival found something much scarier

April 9, 2026 — 9:48am

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Mark Zuckerberg spent the better part of a billion dollars - some reports suggest considerably more - wooing AI researchers to dinner at his Lake Tahoe compound over the past year. He handed out nine-figure pay packages - in some cases to Australians - and effectively blew up his entire AI operation. He fired people, hired new people, and installed a 29-year-old as the man responsible for salvaging his company’s reputation in the field he has declared the defining bet of his career.

On Thursday, the first results arrived.

Muse Spark, Meta’s new AI model, landed with enough fanfare to push the company’s stock up 6.5 per cent in a single day. It’s the first step in what Zuckerberg has promised investors will be “personal superintelligence for everyone.”

The model itself is good, by all accounts, in what’s a fiercely competitive race with incredibly high stakes. Independent testers who got early access say Meta is now, credibly, a competitive AI lab for the first time in years. The model performs well on reasoning benchmarks, handles health queries with depth and draws on social content - think Instagram posts, Facebook threads, and Reels -........

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