Reflection locks in $1bn Nebius AI chip deal

Reflection AI has signed an AI compute deal worth more than $1bn with Nebius, the Amsterdam-based cloud provider, according to Bloomberg. The agreement runs through 2029 and gives the US startup access to Nvidia’s newest GB300 chips.

Nebius confirmed the deal. Its shares, which have more than doubled this year on the AI spending boom, rose on the news before slipping later in the session.

This is Reflection’s second major capacity deal in a month. In June, the company signed a multibillion-dollar deal with SpaceX for the same class of Nvidia chips, reportedly worth about $150m a month through 2029.

Two former Google DeepMind researchers founded Reflection in 2024. The startup builds open-source models and pitches itself as a cheaper, more customizable alternative to the closed systems from OpenAI and Anthropic.

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Reflection is valued at about $8bn and has raised close to $2.6bn from backers including Nvidia, Sequoia Capital, and Lightspeed Venture Partners. It is also in talks to raise a further $2.5bn at a $25bn valuation, the Wall Street Journal reported.

“The need for open models is clear, and this additional compute capacity will allow Reflection to continue to build and train frontier AI models at scale.”

The race for AI compute

AI startups are moving quickly to secure hardware as demand from businesses rises faster than new data centers can come online. That has turned compute capacity into a bottleneck, while chip prices continue to climb.

Open models are gaining traction for two reasons: they are typically cheaper to run and easier to tailor. TNW also notes that last month the Trump administration pressured Anthropic and OpenAI to restrict some of their most powerful models, citing TechCrunch. The episode underscored the risk of depending on a provider that can be cut off overnight.

Nebius builds out its customer roster

Nebius operates as a neocloud, renting out AI computing capacity rather than building models itself. The company split from the Russian internet group Yandex in 2024 and now trades on Nasdaq.

Nvidia has backed Nebius repeatedly, from an early $700m round to a later $2bn investment. Nebius has also expanded through acquisition, buying the inference startup Eigen AI.

Its customer list is already packed with large deals. Nebius signed a five-year agreement with Meta worth up to $27bn, and an earlier deal with Microsoft worth up to $19.4bn. The Reflection agreement adds another high-profile customer — and highlights how much of the open-model push now depends on rented infrastructure.