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Nvidia-backed (NASDAQ:NVDA) Reflection AI on Oct. 9 announced it secured $2 billion in funding to build frontier-scale open intelligence systems that rival closed labs like OpenAI, Google, Gemini, and Anthropic. The startup says it will use the capital to develop what it calls frontier open intelligence that anyone can access.
The team includes engineers and researchers who created PaLM, Gemini, AlphaGo, AlphaCode, and AlphaProof at Google’s DeepMind. According to Reflection AI, contributors to ChatGPT and Character AI also joined the venture.
The round included participation from Nvidia, Disruptive, DST Global, 1789 Capital, B Capital Group, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Charles River Ventures, Sequoia Capital, and Citigroup (NYSE:C), according to Reflection AI.
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Individual backers include Zoom Communications (NASDAQ:ZM) founder Eric Yuan and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt.
The funding enables Reflection AI to expand development of frontier-scale models alongside leading AI research organizations.
AI is becoming the foundational layer for scientific research, education systems, energy optimization, medical diagnostics, and supply chains, Reflection AI said, warning that allowing a handful of laboratories to control this infrastructure creates a dynamic where everyone else gets locked out.
Major breakthroughs in computing history came from open collaboration, Reflection AI said.
Linux, internet protocols, and foundational computing standards all emerged from transparent development processes. According to Reflection AI, AI reached its current capabilities because researchers shared and published scaling ideas openly.
“There’s a narrow window to change this trajectory,” Reflection AI said in its statement. The company added that without intervention, a small number of entities will control the capital, computing power, and talent needed to build AI.
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Reflection AI spent the past year developing a large-scale platform for language modeling and reinforcement learning, according to the company’s statement. The system is designed to train massive Mixture-of-Experts models at frontier scale, a technical capability previously seen only inside top AI research labs.
