Meta Glimmer, a new open-weight model built specifically for AI agents, is now available and designed to run directly on a laptop or PC. Meta announced on Monday that the release forms part of its wider push into agentic AI, the latest wave of generative technology that allows users to delegate tasks to autonomous bots known as agents.
What Meta Glimmer offers
Meta Muse Glimmer is a 30-billion-parameter model. While that figure sounds substantial, the model is engineered to operate more efficiently than many larger systems. By comparison, Moonshot AI’s Kimi K3 model, which approaches the capabilities of leading systems from firms such as Anthropic and OpenAI, carries 2.8 trillion parameters. Glimmer can run on a single GPU, meaning it works on a newer MacBook or another computer fitted with a relatively recent chip. The model is intended to help users orchestrate multiple AI agents at once.
An open-weight approach allows anyone, including researchers and cybersecurity defenders, to examine how a model operates. It is not fully transparent. Open-source advocates argue that genuine open source would require insight into the training data held within the systems developed by Meta and other companies. Even so, it remains less opaque than the closed-weight models offered by other major US developers. Documentation for the model is available on Meta’s website and on HuggingFace. Meta also plans to release the weights of its newest model, Spark 1.2.
Zuckerberg’s case for open access
Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has become one of the most vocal supporters of open-weight AI. In an essay published on Monday, he argued that securing the future depends on ensuring access is not limited to a small number of institutions, including technology companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta. This position contrasts with the closed algorithms that govern his social media platforms.
“The defining questions of our age are who will have access to superintelligence and what will we direct it towards,” Zuckerberg wrote. “We propose a philosophy based on individual empowerment as the source of prosperity, invention as the primary purpose of superintelligence, and balance of power as the foundation of safety.”
Data centre commitments
Meta is also introducing a fund of roughly £790 million to support each community where it opens data centres. These facilities remain contentious, and towns across the US have resisted them over concerns about environmental impact, noise and rising electricity prices. New York recently became the first state to pass a moratorium on data centre construction. Meta, valued at around £1.2 trillion, says its investment in these areas can include bonuses for teachers funded by tax revenue.
The company has spent heavily in recent years to staff its Superintelligence Labs with prominent figures from the AI field, and the group has now released a series of new models. These include the closed-weight Meta Spark 1.1 and Spark 1.2, which power its Meta Code tool that competes with Anthropic’s Claude Code and OpenAI’s Codex. Meta also launched an AI image tool that allowed users to create deepfakes on Instagram, which was later withdrawn.
