Reflection AI launches open-weight Beam model, undercuts Big Tech and Chinese rivals

Reflection AI, a US startup founded by ex-DeepMind researchers, released Beam, an open-weight LLM targeting the corporate market, claiming competitiveness with Chinese models at lower cost than Anthropic and OpenAI. This intensifies price competition in AI, potentially pressuring proprietary model providers and reshaping enterprise adoption. The claim of parity is unverified; market impact depends on actual performance benchmarks.