Technology
Reflection AI launches Beam with 501 billion parameters
The Indian Express··6d ago
Nvidia-backed Reflection AI debuted its first open-weight model, Beam, on Monday. The startup said Beam has 501 billion total parameters and activates 23 billion per task. Reflection said Beam is competitive with Z.ai's GLM-5.2 on coding and agentic tasks. Founders Misha Laskin and Ioannis Antonoglou launched the firm in 2024 after leaving DeepMind research roles.
Prism
What It Means For You
- Beam is positioned for business customers and developers on coding and agent tasks.
- Reflection said activating only part of the network makes the model faster and cheaper to run.
- More technical details are due later this month, the company said.
What's Happening
- Z.ai's GLM-5.2 has about 744 billion total parameters with 40 billion active, Reflection noted.
- The firm is backed by Nvidia and has held talks to raise $2.5 billion at a $25 billion valuation.
- Reflection earlier signed a computing deal with SpaceX for Colossus 2 capacity.
What Beam Claims To Offer
- US firms are competing with cheaper Chinese open-weight models such as DeepSeek and Kimi.
- Reflection emerged from stealth with a focus on open AI models.
- Business Standard reported Reflection was part of a US-brokered sovereign AI deal in Korea.
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