Nvidia reportedly pursues acquisition of open-source AI startup Reflection to counter DeepSeek

Nvidia is reportedly pursuing an acquisition of the open-source AI startup Reflection, or a further investment in it.

The move is being framed as an effort to counter DeepSeek in open-source models, backing a US-based open-source player while also creating new demand for its chips and computing.

Reflection is described as an AI startup taking an open-source route, a contrast with the largely closed frontier models that dominate today.

For Nvidia, investing in or buying a model company means moving upstream from being purely a supplier of compute, deepening its ties to the developer ecosystem.

The “counter DeepSeek” framing reflects how intense competition in the open-source model race has become part of the industry narrative.

The deal, however, remains at the stage of reports and talks; terms, amounts, and whether it will close at all are unresolved, and such deals often face uncertainty before they are finalized.

Caution is warranted: the reports are largely secondhand, and neither Nvidia nor Reflection has offered verifiable official confirmation.

What to watch next is whether the talks turn into a formal announcement, and how the line between open and closed models gets redrawn as compute vendors push deeper into the model layer.