What is Beam? The buzzy American AI model being called the 'DeepSeek of the West'

What happened: Reflection AI, a New York startup founded by two former Google DeepMind researchers, unveiled Beam, an open-weight model for coding, reasoning, and AI-agent tasks. It is in final safety testing and available through a waitlist. Key numbers: 501 billion total parameters, 23 billion active at a time. Founded 2024. Why it matters: The launch is being welcomed as a potentially important US response to China's open-model lead, and investors have described Reflection as the "DeepSeek of the West." Beam still faces competition from DeepSeek, Alibaba, Z.ai, and Moonshot AI.

Reflection AI, a New York startup founded by two former Google DeepMind researchers, unveiled Beam, an open-weight model for coding, reasoning, and AI-agent tasks. It is in final safety testing and available through a waitlist.

The launch is being welcomed as a potentially important US response to China's open-model lead, and investors have described Reflection as the "DeepSeek of the West." Beam still faces competition from DeepSeek, Alibaba, Z.ai, and Moonshot AI.