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

Misha Laskin, co-founder and CEO of Reflection AI, discusses building frontier open-weight models, the launch of the 500B-parameter Beam reasoning model, the economics of renting versus owning intelligence, and why he believes open models will capture most token demand. The conversation covers RL-driven scaling efficiency, Chinese open model ecosystems and their geopolitical implications, and the safety case for openness, including cybersecurity as a lens for defense and offense. He closes with optimism about AI-accelerated science and the evolving research workforce.