# What is Beam? The buzzy American AI model being called the 'DeepSeek of the West' > Source: > Published: 2026-10-06 06:31:01+00:00 # What is Beam? The buzzy American AI model being called the 'DeepSeek of the West' [Business Insider](https://www.businessinsider.com) - Reflection AI's first model is here. - Beam is a text-based model designed for coding and [reasoning](https://www.machinebrief.com/glossary/reasoning) tasks. - Beam is being seen as a competitive Western alternative to open weight models. A New York [AI startup](https://www.machinebrief.com/category/startups) founded by two [former Google DeepMind researchers](https://www.businessinsider.com/former-google-exec-jeff-dean-valuation-for-new-ai-startup-2026-8) has released its first major model — and is pitching it as a homegrown answer to China's increasingly powerful open AI systems. Reflection AI on Monday unveiled Beam, an "open-weight" model designed for coding, reasoning, and AI-agent tasks. The company says it rivals some of China's leading open models while using far less computing power. Here's what to know. ## What is Beam? Beam is Reflection AI's first frontier open-weight model. Open-weight means developers can download the model's parameters, run them on their own hardware, and modify or fine-tune them for specific use cases. That is an alternative to using models from companies such as OpenAI and [Anthropic](https://www.machinebrief.com/glossary/anthropic), which are generally accessed via their own Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). Reflection says Beam, a text-only model, has 501 billion total parameters, but activates only 23 billion at a time — a design intended to make it cheaper and faster to operate. The model can handle coding, multi-step reasoning, and other agentic work. For now, Beam is in final safety testing and available through a waitlist. Reflection says it will release the model's weights, a technical report, and developer tools later this month. ## Who is behind Beam? Reflection was founded in 2024 by Misha Laskin and Ioannis Antonoglou, both former [DeepMind](https://www.machinebrief.com/glossary/deepmind) researchers. "The only way to own intelligence is, by definition, if it's open — because if it's open, you can run it on your stuff, you can own it, you can control it, you can customize it," Laskin, the CEO, said in a podcast released on Monday. The startup has raised billions of dollars and is backed by [investors including Nvidia, Sequoia](https://www.businessinsider.com/sequoia-invests-reflection-ai-startup-vc-2024-8), and Citigroup. In June, it confirmed a funding round at a $25 billion pre-money valuation. ## How does Beam compare? Reflection said Beam is competitive with Z.ai's GLM-5.2 on coding and agentic tasks, and is approaching Alibaba's Qwen 3.8-Max. It said that [Moonshot AI's Kimi K3](https://www.businessinsider.com/kimi-k3-ai-model-moonshot-china-open-weights-benchmarks-pricing-2026-7) remains ahead on raw capability. The startup is pitching itself on efficiency. It said Beam can achieve results comparable to GLM-5.2 on advanced reasoning benchmarks while using three to four times less [inference](https://www.machinebrief.com/glossary/inference) [compute](https://www.machinebrief.com/glossary/compute) — the processing required for a model to answer a prompt. ## How are tech and business leaders reacting? Beam's launch is being welcomed as a potentially important US response to China's open-model lead. It arrives in a crowded field that includes [open models](https://www.businessinsider.com/anthropic-open-source-ai-model-weights-criticism-2026-7) from Meta, [Mistral](https://www.machinebrief.com/compare/mistral-large-vs-grok-2), Nvidia, and Thinking Machines Lab. Beam also faces obvious competition from powerful models released in China by companies including [DeepSeek](https://www.machinebrief.com/compare/llama-4-vs-deepseek-r1), Alibaba, Z.ai, and [Moonshot AI](https://www.businessinsider.com/moonshot-ai-kimi-k3-founder-professor-on-unique-strengths-qualities-2026-7). The Wall Street Journal reported in March that some investors had described Reflection as the "DeepSeek of the West." That [comparison to DeepSeek](https://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-deepseek-r1-china-ai-2025-1) has become the shorthand used in many X posts surrounding Beam's buzzy launch. On Monday, Nvidia AI's official X account congratulated the company on the launch. Investors, including Deedy Das and Shaun Maguire, also expressed their enthusiasm for the launch on X. [Business Insider](https://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-beam-american-ai-model-deepseek-of-the-west-2026-10) Get AI news in your inbox Daily digest of what matters in AI.