Nvidia is in early-stage talks to deepen its investment in Reflection AI or acquire the open-weight model developer outright, the Financial Times reported on Saturday, citing people with direct knowledge of the matter. Reuters carried the report; Reflection declined to comment, and Nvidia did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The talks could take several forms, the FT said, including a so-called acqui-hire in which Nvidia would hire staff and license technology rather than pursue a full acquisition — a structure that would potentially avoid a lengthy regulatory review. An agreement could be reached within weeks, according to the report, though the discussions could still fall apart.
Nvidia is already one of the startup's biggest backers, having invested $800 million. Reflection was founded in 2024 by former DeepMind researchers Misha Laskin and Ioannis Antonoglou and builds tools that automate software development, one of the fastest-growing uses of AI. Laskin told CNBC in April that the company was raising fresh capital at a $25 billion pre-money valuation.
In early October, Reflection launched Beam, a 501-billion-parameter open-weight model aimed at coding and agentic tasks, positioning it against lower-cost Chinese open-weight models. For Nvidia, whose core business is selling AI hardware, supporting open models helps commoditize the software layer that runs on its chips — an incentive that has already driven a string of investments across the AI stack.
