Reflection raises $2B to be America's open frontier AI lab, challenging DeepSeek | TechCrunch

"Reflection, a startup founded just last year by two former Google DeepMind researchers, has raised $2 billion at an $8 billion valuation, a whopping 15x leap from its $545 million valuation just seven months ago. The company, which originally focused on autonomous coding agents, is now positioning itself as both an open-source alternative to closed frontier labs like OpenAI and Anthropic, and a Western equivalent to Chinese AI firms like DeepSeek."

"The startup was launched in March 2024 by Misha Laskin, who led reward modeling for DeepMind's Gemini project, and Ioannis Antonoglou, who co-created AlphaGo, the AI system that famously beat the world champion in the board game Go in 2016. Their background developing these very advanced AI systems is central to their pitch, which is that the right AI talent can build frontier models outside established tech giants."

"Along with its new round, Reflection announced that it has recruited a team of top talent from DeepMind and OpenAI, and built an advanced AI training stack that it promises will be open for all. Perhaps most importantly, Reflection says it has "identified a scalable commercial model that aligns with our open intelligence strategy." Reflection's team currently numbers about 60 people - mostly AI researchers and engineers across infrastructure, data training, and algorithm development, per Laskin, the company's CEO."

Reflection secured $2 billion at an $8 billion valuation after launching in March 2024. The company aims to be an open-source alternative to closed frontier labs and a Western counterpart to Chinese AI firms. Founders Misha Laskin and Ioannis Antonoglou bring DeepMind experience including reward modeling for Gemini and AlphaGo development. Reflection recruited talent from DeepMind and OpenAI and built an advanced, promised-open AI training stack. The team is about 60 researchers and engineers focused on infrastructure, data training, and algorithms. Reflection has secured a compute cluster and plans a frontier language model trained on tens of trillions of tokens next year.

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