Reflection AI Unveils Beam, a 501B-Parameter Model Taking on China
Reflection AI has unveiled Beam, a 501-billion-parameter open-weight AI model aimed squarely at competing with lower-cost Chinese open models like DeepSeek and Z.ai. The company says Beam matches leading Chinese open models on reasoning benchmarks at 3–4x lower inference compute — though the claims have not yet been independently verified. Sources: Reuters; TechCrunch; RuntimeWire — October 5, 2026.