source: techcrunch ai: reflection inks $1b compute deal with nebius
level: business
reflection ai, a u.s. startup building open-weight models, has signed a $1 billion compute deal with european ai infrastructure company nebius. nebius, previously the international arm of russian tech firm yandex, will provide reflection with access to nvidia's newest chips. this agreement follows a recent deal reflection made to use spacex's computing resources.
the deal reflects a broader trend of ai firms racing to lock in compute capacity for training and deploying models. reflection is among several open-weight developers gaining attention as debates grow over closed-source ai. concerns about data retention and government intervention have increased interest in open models. last month, the trump administration pushed anthropic and openai to restrict their most powerful new models, raising fears that access could be revoked suddenly. more capable open models from china have also fueled mainstream interest in open source ai.
reflection, valued at $8 billion, was founded in 2024 by two former google deepmind researchers. it has raised nearly $2.6 billion from investors including nvidia, sequoia capital, and lightspeed venture partners. nebius itself recently secured a $2 billion investment from nvidia and signed a five-year infrastructure deal with meta worth up to $27 billion. last year, nebius also signed a multi-year deal with microsoft worth up to $19.4 billion.
why it matters: securing large-scale compute is critical for ai startups to train competitive models, and this deal highlights the growing infrastructure demands and strategic partnerships shaping the ai industry.
source: techcrunch ai: reflection inks $1b compute deal with nebius