Meta returns to open models with Zuckerberg's plan to out-copy China and sell compute by auction

Meta has announced the launch of Muse Glimmer, its first open model from Superintelligence Labs, featuring a size of 30 billion parameters. The model can run on consumer hardware after weight compression, requiring less than 20 GB of memory. In an accompanying essay, Mark Zuckerberg defends the practice of distilling other labs' models and calls for fewer restrictions on US labs. This development reflects Meta's strategy to compete with major players like OpenAI and Anthropic, with an open-weight version of Muse Spark 1.2 expected to follow soon. This could reshape the AI landscape and enhance Meta's ability to auction compute resources.