AI NewsReflection inks $1B compute deal with Nebius

Reflection inks $1B compute deal with Nebius

8:38 PM IST · July 14, 2026

Reflection AI, a U.S. startup vying to developopen models, has signed a $1 billion compute deal with European AI infrastructure company, Nebius. Nebius, formerly the international arm of Russian tech giant Yandex, will provide Reflection access to Nvidia’s latest chips. The deal comes just a few weeks after the startup signed asimilar deal to access SpaceX’s computing resources, and mirrors several partnerships by AI firms as they race to secure compute for training and deploying their models. Along with its increasingly capable Chinese counterparts, Reflection is one of several open-weight AI model developers that have received ample attention lately as debate rages over the value of top-shelf, closed-source AI models — especially withdata retention concernssurging up, as well as government intervention. Just last month, the Trump administration pressuredAnthropicandOpenAIto restrict their most powerful new models, raising concerns that access toAI models could be taken away overnight. That, plus the release of more capable open models from China, has led to an increase in 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 close to $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 dealwith Metaworth up to $27 billion. Last year, Nebius signed a multi-year deal with Microsoft worth up to $19.4 billion. TechCrunch has reached out to Reflection and Nebius for more information.