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

The latest letter, signed by 25 companies, comes at a time when Chinese AI models are rapidly proliferating. (AI Image via OpenAI)

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.

Here are some details:

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.