Nvidia is in early-stage talks to deepen its investment in - or outright acquire - Reflection AI, the open-weight AI startup it already backs, the Financial Times reported on Saturday. The deal could take several forms: a full acquisition, an "acqui-hire" in which Nvidia hires key staff and licenses the technology to sidestep lengthy antitrust review, additional equity, or a bigger chip and compute supply commitment.
Nvidia has already put $800 million into Reflection AI, which was valued at $25 billion in a March 2026 funding round. Founded in 2024 by former Google DeepMind researchers Misha Laskin and Ioannis Antonoglou, the startup released its first open-weight model, Beam - a 501-billion-parameter mixture-of-experts model under Apache 2.0 - on Oct. 5, positioning it against DeepSeek and Kimi.
The talks could close within weeks but could also collapse entirely. Neither Nvidia nor Reflection AI has confirmed the discussions, and Reuters reported it could not independently verify the FT's account; Reflection AI declined to comment. The report nonetheless underscores how aggressively chipmakers are racing to lock up open-weight model talent as the AI frontier consolidates.
