Reflection AI unveils Beam, its first open model, as a Western alternative to Chinese models
In 30 seconds
Reflection AI has unveiled Beam, its first open-weight model, which a small group of users is testing through a waitlist for now. The company will release the weights this month under the Apache 2.0 open license, along with its technical report. According to the company, it achieves results comparable to GLM-5.2, from Chinese company Z.ai, while using three to four times less computing power.
Reflection AI, the American startup that wants to be the alternative to Chinese open models, has unveiled Beam, its first model.
Beam is an open-weight model, the kind you can download and run on your own, but it is not available to everyone yet: for now, a small group of users is testing it through a waitlist while it completes its final safety testing and evaluations. The company will release the weights this month under the Apache 2.0 open license, along with its technical report.
CEO Misha Laskin told Semafor that Beam is particularly strong at coding and agentic tasks. According to the company, it achieves results comparable to GLM-5.2, one of the recent models from Chinese company Z.ai, while using three to four times less computing power.
The company, founded in 2024 by former DeepMind researchers and based in New York, is backed by Nvidia and Sequoia, among others, and it is already training its next model.
Until now, Chinese startups and tech giants have led open-source AI.
Why it matters
Until now, Chinese companies have led open AI, and Reflection AI wants to be the American alternative.
Official source: Reflection AI
