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Misha Laskin

Co-Founder and CEO, Reflection Ai

Search every verified Misha Laskin interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Misha Laskin, co-founder and CEO of Reflection AI, has been publicly promoting the company's first open-weight AI model, Beam, which was made available for download on Hugging Face in October 2026. In interviews, Laskin described Beam as an open-weight model built for coding, reasoning, and long-horizon workloads, and he argued that open models allow enterprises and public sector customers to "own" their AI rather than "rent" it from closed labs. He compared the shift to real estate, stating that as companies scale their AI usage, ownership becomes more attractive for reasons including data control, cost, and customization. Laskin also said that open models are important for safety and security, contending that a small number of safety researchers at closed labs cannot adequately cover the "long tail" of vulnerabilities, and he cited an incident involving OpenAI and Hugging Face as an example of a closed model causing unintended consequences. Laskin also discussed the competitive landscape, acknowledging that Chinese open models currently lead in distribution but stating that Reflection's models are within "shooting distance" of the frontier. He said the company trains its models from scratch and uses reinforcement learning, and he described the AI market as a "very big pie" with room for multiple successful companies. He noted that open model tokens now account for a majority of consumption on popular gateways, and he framed open models as a national security imperative, arguing that the U.S. should win by merit rather than regulation. Laskin also mentioned that Reflection has raised $4.6 billion from investors including Nvidia, and he said the company has seen "tremendous inbound" interest from banks and Fortune 500 companies following Beam's launch.

Recent appearances

  • 'THE PIE IS VERY BIG': Why this AI CEO says there is room for more winners

    October 16, 2026 · 📺 Fox Business

    Reflection AI CEO Misha Laskin discusses the release of the open-weight AI model 'Beam,' the company's valuation, and reports of Nvidia expanding its stake in the firm on ‘The Claman Countdown.’ #fox #media #breakingnews #us #usa #new #news #breaking #foxbusiness #theclamancountdown #reflectionai #mishalaskin #laskin #nvidia #artificialintelligence #ai #technology #tech #airesearch #aimodels #opensourceai #innovation #aistartups #techstocks #investing #valuation #aidevelopment #machinelearning #aicompetition #businessnews Subscribe to Fox Business: https://bit.ly/2D9Cdse Watch more Fox Busine…

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  • Our model puts us within 'shooting distance' of China's AI models, says Reflection CEO

    October 15, 2026 · 📺 CNBC Television

    Misha Laskin, Reflection co-founder and CEO joins 'Closing Bell' to talk its new open source AI model, Beam, that could compete ...MISHA LASKIN IS REFLECTION AI CEO. HE'S WITH ME LIVE, AS YOU SEE. WELCOME. IT'S NICE TO HAVE YOU ON OUR ...

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  • Why AI Keeps Breaking Out Of The Sandbox

    October 14, 2026 · 📺 This Week in Startups Clips

    Thanks to our partners at Paper! Paper is the legal backbone for thousands of startup founders and fund managers - including Launch. Use https://getpaper.ai/twist to get your cap table free for a year - or two years if you're leaving Carta. Can an AI model be trusted to stay inside the box we build for it? In this TWiST highlight, Reflection AI co-founder Misha Laskin walks through a recent incident where a powerful, unreleased model was handed a test… and found a very creative way to deal with it. Jason Calacanis jumps in with the obvious question… Shouldn’t the sandbox have stopped it? St…

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  • Why Founders Should Own Their AI Instead Of Renting It

    October 14, 2026 · 📺 This Week in Startups Clips

    Thanks to our partner, Odoo, the all-in-one business platform. Your first app is free! Get started today at https://Odoo.com/twist Are you renting your intelligence, and does it make sense to keep doing it? In this TWiST highlight, Reflection AI co-founder Misha Laskin compares the AI market to the one thing every founder understands: real estate. Jason Calacanis sets up the question, and Misha lays out when the math starts to change… What flips a rental into an ownership decision? Stick around to hear why open source went from an afterthought to everyone’s topic in six months! 📺  Watch t…

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  • Only 500 People Are Securing The World’s Most Powerful AI

    October 14, 2026 · 📺 This Week in Startups Clips

    Thanks to our partners at Superhuman! Superhuman Go is an AI chat that’s always there when you need it, already aware of what you're doing, and doesn't ask you to start from zero. Sign up to get the best in AI at https://superhuman.com/ Who is actually keeping frontier AI safe? In this TWiST highlight, Reflection AI co-founder Misha Laskin runs the numbers on how many people have access to the world’s most powerful models, and how many of them are working on safety. Jason Calacanis reaches for a car analogy that might make you uncomfortable… Are we shipping the robot before the seatbelts?…

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  • The Ex-DeepMind Researcher Taking On China’s Open Source AI

    October 14, 2026 · 📺 This Week in Startups and This Week in AI

    This Week In Startups is made possible by: Paper: https://getpaper.ai/twist Superhuman: https://superhuman.com/ Odoo: https://Odoo.com/twist Today’s show: Misha Laskin of Reflection AI joins Jason to explain why big companies are done renting their AI from closed labs. Enterprises want to keep their data, cut their costs, and tune their models to their unique businesses. Reflection is launching its first open-weight model, Beam, just three months after acquiring its first big cluster. Misha admits that Beam trails the best Chinese open models by a couple of months, and needs 3 to 4 times fe…

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  • Beam: The Great American Open Model with ReflectionAI Co-Founder and CEO Misha Laskin

    October 09, 2026 · 📺 No Priors: AI, Machine Learning, Tech, & Startups

    Is the future of frontier AI open or closed? ReflectionAI co-founder and CEO Misha Laskin joins Sarah Guo and Elad Gil to discuss the launch of Beam, the company’s 500 billion parameter open-weight reasoning model. Misha breaks down the pre-training and reinforcement learning required to produce Beam’s reasoning efficiency, the shift in enterprise compute from renting to owning intelligence, and how he believes that open models will capture the majority of global token demand. He also talks about the open model ecosystem in China and why competition with China’s models is a good thing, safety…

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  • Shifting From Renting AI to Owning It

    October 09, 2026 · 📺 Lightspeed Venture Partners

    Reflection co-founder Misha Laskin sits down with Claire Zau in Washington, D.C. to explain why AI labs need a presence in policy conversations and where the open weights debate stands right now. Misha compares closed and open models to renting and owning a home, and says companies that started by renting intelligence are now moving toward ownership. He describes a shift on AI gateways over the past six months from roughly 70 percent closed tokens to a majority of open ones. They also cover some of Misha’s arguments: why China's labs have led on open models, why AI startups want control over…

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  • Reflection CEO Misha Laskin on open source AI models as a national security imperative

    October 05, 2026 · 📺 Washington Post Live

    Reflection CEO Misha Laskin speaks about the role of open models in a thriving AI ecosystem and national security and big tech’s “concentration of power” challenge. Recorded on Oct. 1, 2026 at The Washington Post’s AI Edge Summit. 00:00 - Intro 01:38 - Reflection origins 04:50 - Open vs. closed AI models explained (the real estate analogy) 07:35 - When will Reflection release its base model? 09:13 - Can Western open-source keep pace with China's models? 10:30 - Should frontier AI development slow down? 12:56 - Inside President Trump’s White House AI accord 14:05 - Should open-source AI be sub…

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  • An open model challenger to Anthropic and OpenAI

    October 05, 2026 · 📺 Sources Podcast and Alex Heath

    Reflection is releasing Beam, its first open-weight AI model, in a bid to become the DeepSeek of the West. Trained from scratch, Beam is designed for coding, reasoning, and AI agents. Reflection's benchmarks put it alongside the strongest open models, with substantially more efficient token economics. To mark Beam’s debut, I'm joined by Reflection's co-founders: CEO Misha Laskin, who led reward modeling for Google’s Gemini, and CTO Ioannis Antonoglou, who helped create AlphaGo and AlphaZero before leading Gemini’s RLHF effort. Reflection has raised $4.6 billion from investors that include Nvi…

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  • Black Hat USA 2026 | Opening Session: Cyber Power in the Age of AI

    August 06, 2026 · 📺 Black Hat

    The United States has entered a new era of cybersecurity. As AI and cyber capabilities become increasingly central to national and economic security, The White House is setting the direction for how America will compete, defend and operate in an AI-driven cyber era. In this opening fireside, The White House National Cyber Director Sean Cairncross discusses how President Trump's Cyber Strategy for America is focused on strengthening coordination across government and industry and shaping the next phase of U.S. cyber policy. The conversation also explores the evolving role of offensive cyber o…

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  • Why Open Source Is Key to AI’s Next Chapter | Misha Laskin at London Tech Week | Reflection

    July 02, 2026 · 📺 Reflection AI

    Misha Laskin, Co-Founder & CEO of Reflection, joined London Tech Week for “Why Open Source is Key to AI’s Next Chapter” for a conversation on why the next generation of AI companies are embracing open source. #LTW #LondonTechWeek on June 8, 2026 Speaker: Misha Laskin, Co-Founder & CEO, Reflection Moderator: Iain Martin, Senior Editor, Europe, Forbes Reflection is a research lab making intelligence open and accessible for everyone to use, customize, and build on. -- Reflection builds open-weight AI models, trained end-to-end in-house and designed to stand alongside the world's leading op…

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The summary and quote tags on this profile are produced with AI assistance from verified, first-person interview transcripts, then checked by our team to confirm the speaker's identity and the accuracy of every quote. See how we verify →