Reflection introduces Beam, but its open weights are still to come

Reflection introduced Beam on Monday, but has not released its model weights. The company says downloads, a technical report and a model card will arrive later in October. Early access requires signing up, and final safety testing continues.

Reflection says Beam has 501 billion total parameters, with 23 billion active during use. The company targets coding, reasoning and multi-step agent tasks. Those specifications come from Reflection.

CEO Misha Laskin told Semafor that Beam uses three to four times less computing power for reasoning than comparable open models. He said businesses and governments want local control without relying on Chinese models.

Reflection provided the specifications and efficiency claim. HotTea has not independently tested Beam, and an announcement does not establish general availability.

Downloading a model lets buyers control where it runs and how it handles data. They also have to operate it. A benchmark score cannot show how many useful tasks the model finishes on the hardware a buyer has.

Reflection has announced Beam and published specifications. Before putting it into production, buyers still need the download, usable licence terms and measurements on real work.

Watch for the weights, model card and licence later this month. Then compare completed tasks, failure rates and operating cost on the same hardware.