Meta has finally entered the top league of AI with its new Muse Wonder models, earlier known by the codename “Watermelon.” The bigger version, Muse Wonder Full, has scored 56 on Artificial Analysis’ Intelligence Index — second only to Anthropic’s Claude Opus 5.5 at 58. This places Meta ahead of OpenAI’s GPT-6 Astra, Google’s Gemini 4 Argon, and Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5.1, each at 53.
The climb has been steep because Meta rebuilt its AI team, spent heavily on talent, and used its massive computing infrastructure, including the Prometheus data-centre system. It also has billions of users across Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, plus a growing Muse AI app. Meta says the models can work as practical “agents” for coding, legal questions, finance, bookings and other multi-step tasks.
Meta’s advantages are scale, distribution and money. It can put advanced AI in front of a huge global audience, while its data centres provide the computing power to train and run large models. The models also show strength in long coding projects, legal work and memory-based tasks. But Claude Opus 5.5 still leads the index, and Meta’s best model is limited to paid Muse Code plans.
The AI battle will now become more intense. OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and Meta will compete on price, reliability, safety, agents and real business usefulness—not just benchmark scores. Meta has broken the earlier bipolar contest, but companies remain cautious because of accuracy, data security and legal risk. The real test is whether strong rankings turn into trusted daily use.
THE REAL AI WAR IS ABOUT TRUST, NOT JUST SMARTER MODELS.
Sanjay Sahay
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