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 said 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 toward nontechnical professionals. The latter offering includes several vertical-specific feature bundles geared toward industries such as the healthcare and financial sectors.

Image: Meta