Nvidia-backed ‘open’ AI start-up courts investors at $20bn-plus valuation

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A Nvidia-backed start-up developing “open” AI models is in funding talks that value it at more than $20bn, as Washington looks for alternatives to Chinese rivals such as DeepSeek.

Reflection AI is in discussions with investors about a new deal that would more than double the valuation it secured after raising $2bn in October, according to multiple people with direct knowledge of the talks.

The company is seeking to raise at least another $2bn in a new funding round, though no target has been fixed, they added. Reflection was valued at $8bn in October, up from $545mn in a funding round a year ago.

The New York-based start-up, founded by former Google DeepMind research scientists Misha Laskin and Ioannis Antonoglou, builds open models which developers are free to download and modify.

The company has been hiring researchers who have worked on leading AI models including OpenAI’s GPT-5 and Google’s Gemini.

The two-year-old group’s main rivals are in China, where model builders such as Alibaba and DeepSeek have overtaken the US in the market for open models.

The biggest US players including OpenAI, Meta and Google have preferred to maintain full control of their most advanced technology, profiting from them through customer subscriptions or enterprise deals.

But as widespread adoption will confer outsized influence over AI’s future, Reflection’s…