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NVIDIA is reportedly in talks to buy Reflection AI or invest more in it, according to the Financial Times
IA en un minuto newsroom · Editor: Jon Elgezabal
In 30 seconds
NVIDIA is weighing closer ties with Reflection AI, the young American maker of open models, and buying it outright is among the options, as reported by the Financial Times. According to that account, contacts have only just begun and halfway formulas are possible, such as taking on its staff or supplying extra chips. NVIDIA and Reflection AI have confirmed nothing, and the negotiations may come to nothing.
NVIDIA is in talks to deepen its investment in Reflection AI or to acquire it, the Financial Times reported on Saturday, October 10, citing people with direct knowledge of the talks. Nothing has been agreed and neither company has confirmed it.
Reflection AI is an American company founded in 2024 by two former Google DeepMind researchers. On October 5 it introduced Beam, its first open-weight model (one whose parameters are released so that others can use and modify them), entering a market where Chinese companies have a strong presence.
According to the newspaper, the talks are at an early stage and a deal could take several forms, including an acquisition offer, hiring its staff and licensing its technology rather than a full acquisition, an agreement to supply it with more chips, or a larger equity investment. NVIDIA has already invested $800 million in Reflection AI, also according to the Financial Times. An agreement could be reached in the coming weeks, although the talks could still fall apart.
Bloomberg, in a report carried by The Business Times that cites a person familiar with the matter, describes the talks as being about a larger investment or computing power and adds that no terms have been reached. NVIDIA did not immediately respond to its request for comment and Reflection AI declined to comment.
According to the same report, Reflection AI has held talks to raise $2.5 billion at a valuation of $25 billion, as The Wall Street Journal previously reported, and has struck billion-dollar deals with SpaceX and the cloud provider Nebius Group to secure computing power. A tie-up with Reflection AI would add to the transactions NVIDIA has made in recent months, among them a $13 billion agreement in September to buy Hugging Face and a roughly $20 billion licensing pact with the chip startup Groq. NVIDIA's chief executive, Jensen Huang, is a major proponent of open-weight models, Bloomberg adds.
Why it matters · analysis and opinion
Whoever sells the chips also wants to be close to whoever makes the models. NVIDIA has spent months using its financial muscle to weave alliances across the industry, and a move on Reflection AI would fit that pattern: making sure an American supply of open-weight models exists, a field where Chinese companies are strong. For a company choosing a model, the reading cuts both ways. Open models would gain a well-resourced backer, which gives more assurance of continuity; in exchange, whoever develops them would be less independent of the chipmaker. For now nothing should be taken for granted: everything comes from anonymous sources, no terms have been reached and the deal may end up as a simple increase in the investment, or as nothing.
Source: Financial Times · Written with the help of AI: how we make the news
