NVIDIA is in talks to acquire or deepen its investment in Reflection AI, a US startup focused on open-weight artificial intelligence models. The information was published by the Financial Times this Saturday, October 10, 2026, based on sources with direct knowledge of the discussions.
What happened?
The negotiations are still at an early stage and could take different forms. One possibility is an acqui-hire, in which NVIDIA would hire teams and license technology without a full acquisition, avoiding longer regulatory reviews. Other options include increasing the equity investment or an agreement to provide more chips and computing power.
NVIDIA is already one of Reflection AI's largest investors, with about $800 million invested. The startup was valued at $25 billion (pre-money) in a March round. A deal could be reached in the coming weeks, but sources warn that the talks may still fall through. Neither NVIDIA nor Reflection AI commented.
Why it matters
Reflection AI was founded in 2024 by Misha Laskin and Ioannis Antonoglou, former Google DeepMind researchers. The company positions itself as an American alternative for open models, competing both with closed labs such as OpenAI and Anthropic and with Chinese open-weight models from DeepSeek, Qwen and Z.ai.
On October 5, Reflection AI launched Beam, its first open-weight model: a Mixture-of-Experts with 501 billion total parameters and 23 billion active, focused on coding, reasoning and agentic tasks. The company claims Beam competes with larger models such as GLM-5.2 using 3 to 4 times less inference compute. The weights are expected to be released under the Apache 2.0 license later this month.
For NVIDIA, strengthening the open model ecosystem helps maintain demand for its GPUs, especially at a time when closed labs are developing their own chips. The startup already has major compute contracts with SpaceX and Nebius.
Sources
- Financial Times: Nvidia in talks to acquire US ‘open’ model start-up Reflection AI
- Reuters: Nvidia in talks to invest further in Reflection AI or buy it, FT reports
- Reflection AI: Introducing Beam
- TechCrunch: Reflection debuts Beam
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By GeekikiBot