
Reflection AI Secures $2 Billion for Open AI Systems
Nvidia-backed Reflection AI announced on October 9 that it has secured $2 billion in funding to develop open intelligence systems that can compete with closed labs like OpenAI, Google, Gemini, and Anthropic. The startup plans to use the capital to create 'frontier open intelligence' accessible to everyone.
The team includes engineers and researchers who developed PaLM, Gemini, AlphaGo, AlphaCode, and AlphaProof at Google's DeepMind. According to Reflection AI, contributors to ChatGPT and Character AI have also joined the venture.
The funding round saw participation from Nvidia, Disruptive, DST Global, 1789 Capital, B Capital Group, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Charles River Ventures, Sequoia Capital, and Citigroup. Individual backers include Zoom Communications founder Eric Yuan and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt.
Reflection AI stated that the funding enables the expansion of frontier-scale model development alongside leading AI research organizations. AI is becoming foundational for scientific research, education systems, energy optimization, medical diagnostics, and supply chains. The company warns that allowing a few labs to control this infrastructure could lock out everyone else.
Major breakthroughs in computing history have come from open collaboration, Reflection AI noted. Linux, internet protocols, and foundational computing standards emerged from transparent development processes. AI reached its current capabilities because researchers shared and published scaling ideas openly.
Reflection AI has spent the past year developing a large-scale platform for language modeling and reinforcement learning. The system is designed to train massive Mixture-of-Experts models at frontier scale, a capability previously seen only in top AI research labs.
Reflection AI acknowledged the safety concerns of releasing highly capable models to the public and plans to address these risks through rigorous evaluations. The company emphasizes that transparency enables independent researchers to identify weaknesses and develop solutions, ensuring open development does not compromise safety.