Meta's new AI model shows early promise, but investors want to see Zuckerberg's strategy

meta unveiled its new ai model, muse spark, in early april — a shift away from the open-source llama models it had been giving away for free. now meta wants to charge developers for access, similar to openai and google. but investors are waiting for zuckerberg's broader strategy. according to arena.ai, as of sunday meta ai trails anthropic's claude and google's gemini in text, and only claude in vision. it's ahead of openai's gpt in both. claude also leads in document and code, where meta ranks lower. analysts at citizens called ai a "complementary good" for meta and said they expect more detail on the earnings call. truist analysts noted muse spark is closed-source, a shift from llama's open approach. meta's ad business is still growing — analysts expect 31% year-over-year revenue growth for q1 to $55.6 billion, the fastest since 2021. but wall street wants ai momentum beyond ads. meta's stock is up 24% in the past year, while alphabet has gained 116%. the company also said it will lay off 10% of its workforce, about 8,000 employees, on may 20, while planning $115-$135 billion in ai capex for 2026.