Meta launches Muse Wonder, its most capable AI models yet, and says it has caught up to the frontier

Meta on Monday, Oct. 12, 2026, introduced Muse Wonder and Muse Wonder Full, calling them "our most capable models to date" and claiming state-of-the-art performance on personal and professional agent tasks. Muse Wonder is available now through the Meta Model API and Muse Code, Muse Wonder Full is available to Muse Code subscribers, and Wonder will soon power the Muse personal agent app, rolling out to subscribers first. Meta's shares rose about 4% in afternoon trading, Reuters reported.

Fourteen months ago Meta was the lab people politely stopped mentioning in frontier rankings. Today it shipped a model an independent benchmarker places right behind Anthropic's best, and Zuckerberg is telling the FT the catch-up is done. The more telling detail is the price tag: Wonder doesn't show up free for everyone; it arrives first behind $20 to $200 subscriptions, for an agent app that just topped the App Store. This is Meta trying to turn an enormous AI bill into revenue that isn't ads. The pitch, memory that follows you around and an agent that won't quit when a website fights back, is exactly what makes people nervous about Muse reading their messages, and the full safety report is still "coming soon." Benchmarks are Meta's own for now, apart from one outside index. But the frontier just got a fourth serious player, and it has three billion users to sell to.

Meta introduced the Muse Wonder series, Muse Wonder and Muse Wonder Full, on Monday, Oct. 12, 2026, calling them its most capable models to date and saying they deliver state-of-the-art performance on personal and professional agentic tasks. Agentic, here, means the software can take a chain of steps on someone’s behalf, not only answer a question. Meta says the models are built on the groundwork of Muse Spark. “Fourteen months ago, we began an overhaul of our AI efforts, and in that time we’ve gone from rebuilding our foundations to pushing the frontier,” Meta said. Those lines are Meta’s.

Availability, as Meta tells it: Muse Wonder is available today to developers through the Meta Model API and Muse Code. Muse Wonder Full is available today to Muse Code subscribers. Muse Wonder will soon power experiences in the Muse app, rolling out first to subscribers, and will power artifact generation. An artifact, here, is a file or object the agent makes for you, such as a document or a small app. Meta says it will later use Wonder to develop specialized models it can bring to everyone using Muse. Those lines are Meta’s.

Pricing, as CNBC reports it: Muse app users need a $20 or $100 monthly subscription to use Muse Wonder. Muse Wonder Full is available to developers on Muse Code plans of $50 or $200 a month. Meta AI chief Alexandr Wang told CNBC that API access will cost more than the standard subscriptions because it is a “much larger model and at frontier level,” but will be priced “meaningfully below” leading models from OpenAI and Anthropic. Wang said the model’s codename was Watermelon. Those prices and that quotation are CNBC’s account of Wang.

Meta says the models were trained at its gigawatt-scale Prometheus data center. A gigawatt is a billion watts of power, enough to run a large city. Two headline capabilities, as Meta names them: Active Memory, carrying what matters to a user across conversations and pulling back relevant details; and Active Focus, continuing toward a goal when a task gets hard, trying other approaches, recovering from errors, asking for clarification, and checking in before important actions. Meta says it evaluated the models on expert tasks in law, finance and health, including Harvey’s Legal Agent Benchmark, on FocusBench, and on SWE-Marathon for long-running software projects. Those names and claims are Meta’s.

Wang told CNBC: “When you do real-world tasks, you’re going to get roadblocks and you’re going to get things that come up or various setbacks. We specifically tried to train the model to be able to try other approaches instead of stalling and then checking back in with the user at any time.” That quotation is CNBC’s.

On safety, Meta says it trained the Muse Wonder family to avoid sharing private information without permission and to turn down requests to help with harmful acts. It says Muse Wonder has its strongest safeguards to date against chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and cyber misuse, while keeping defensive cyber capabilities, under its Meta Superintelligence Scaling Framework. Meta says a full report with additional safety evaluations “will be available soon.” Those lines are Meta’s. The full report is not out.

Independent benchmarker Artificial Analysis said Muse Wonder Full (max) outperforms Fable 5.1 (max) on its Intelligence Index, matches Sonnet 5.5 (max), and is just shy of Opus 5.5 (max). That ranking is Artificial Analysis’s, not Meta’s. The rest of the launch numbers are Meta’s own evaluations.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Mark Zuckerberg said Meta has caught up with rivals at the frontier of AI with Wonder and rejected calls for a slowdown. Those lines are the FT’s account of Zuckerberg.

CNBC notes that Muse rose to the top of Apple’s App Store after Meta launched the agent app last month, and that some users have complained on social media that the agent accessed personal messages without authorization, which Meta has disputed. Wang said some users may have authorized communications earlier in a conversation and forgotten. Those lines are CNBC’s.

The picture is Meta’s official launch graphic: the words Introducing Muse Wonder in blue type, framed by rows of the word WONDER. It is the company’s release image. The frame does not print a calendar date.

In plain terms, Meta said on Monday that Muse Wonder and the bigger Muse Wonder Full are its most capable models yet, built for agents that remember you and keep going when a task gets hard. Wonder is on Meta’s API and Muse Code today. The Muse app will get it first for paying subscribers. Reuters says the shares rose about 4%. An outside index puts Wonder Full just behind Anthropic’s best. Meta’s own full safety report is still “coming soon.”