Reflection AI, a US startup competing to develop open models, has signed a $1 billion computing deal with European AI infrastructure company Nebius.
Nebius, formerly the international arm of Russian tech giant Yandex, will give Reflection access to Nvidia’s latest chips. The deal comes just weeks after the startup struck a similar deal to gain access to SpaceX’s computing resources, and reflects several partnerships by AI companies competing to secure compute for training and deploying models.
Reflection is one of several openweight AI model development companies, along with increasingly talented Chinese developers, that has recently received ample attention as the debate over the value of top-of-the-line closed-source AI models rages on, especially with growing data retention concerns and government intervention.
Just last month, the Trump administration pressured Anthropic and OpenAI to restrict their most powerful new models, raising concerns that access to AI models could be taken away overnight. In addition, the release of more capable open models from China is increasing mainstream interest in open source AI.
Reflection, currently valued at $8 billion, was founded in 2024 by two former Google DeepMind researchers. It has already raised nearly $2.6 billion in funding from backers including Nvidia, Sequoia Capital, and Lightspeed Venture Partners.
Shortly after securing a $2 billion investment from Nvidia, Nebius signed a five-year infrastructure deal with Meta worth up to $27 billion. Last year, Nebius signed a multi-year deal with Microsoft worth up to $19.4 billion.
TechCrunch reached out to Reflection and Nebius for more information.
