Nvidia-backed Reflection unveils first AI model to take on Chinese open models

Nvidia-backed Reflection AI debuted its first open-weight model named Beam on Monday, as the startup aims to compete with lower-cost Chinese models such as DeepSeek and Kimi in coding and agentic tasks.

Reflection said Beam is competitive with Chinese AI startup Z.ai's GLM‑5.2 and is closing in on Qwen3.8‑Max on coding and agentic tasks.

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The startup said that Beam contains 501 billion total parameters, or variables that determine how an AI system processes information, but activates only 23 billion for each task to make the model faster and cheaper to run by using only part of its network for each task.

Comparatively, Z.ai's GLM-5.2 has about 744 billion total parameters with 40 billion active parameters.

The launch comes as US tech firms are trying to fend off competition from Chinese open-weight models that are cheaper, more customizable and capable of generating code nearly as well as leading models from OpenAI and Anthropic.

Founded in 2024 by former DeepMind researchers Misha Laskin and Ioannis Antonoglou, Reflection develops tools that automate software development, a fast-growing use case for AI.

Earlier this year, Reflection signed a deal with SpaceX for additional computing capacity at the Elon Musk-led company's Colossus 2 data center.