Reflection AI Secures $130 Million in Funding, Unveils Asimov Code Research Agent

New York, NY – Reflection AI, a startup founded by former DeepMind and OpenAI researchers, has launched Asimov, a new code research agent designed to significantly reduce the time engineers spend understanding existing codebases. The launch follows a substantial funding effort, with the company securing $130 million across two rounds. The introduction of Asimov directly addresses a critical industry challenge: engineers often spend a disproportionate amount of their time deciphering existing code rather than writing new solutions. As Misha Laskin, co-founder of Reflection AI, stated in a tweet, > "Engineers spend 70% of their time understanding code, not writing it. That’s why we built Asimov at @reflection_ai. The best-in-class code research agent, built for teams and organizations." This statistic is widely cited across the software development industry, highlighting a significant drain on productivity. Asimov aims to streamline this process by acting as a comprehensive knowledge source. It integrates information not only from the codebase itself but also from team communications, project management tools, and other documentation. The agent employs a novel multi-agent design, featuring a "big reasoner with small retrievers," to efficiently process and understand large, complex codebases, thereby building a unified source of truth for engineering knowledge. Reflection AI claims that in blind tests, Asimov's answers to complex questions were preferred 60-80% of the time, outperforming some existing AI tools. Reflection AI was co-founded by Misha Laskin, who contributed to the training workflow for Google's Gemini large language model, and Ioannis Antonoglou, a founding engineer at Google DeepMind known for his work on AlphaGo. Their collective vision for Reflection AI extends beyond mere code assistance; the company aims to develop "superintelligent coding agents" as a foundational step towards achieving general superintelligence, envisioning a future where engineers primarily act as architects managing an AI workforce. The company's rapid development has been fueled by significant investment. Reflection AI raised $130 million, including a $25 million seed round led by Sequoia Capital and CRV, and a $105 million Series A round co-led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and CRV. High-profile investors such as Nvidia Corp.'s venture capital arm, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, and Scale AI Inc. CEO Alexandr Wang also participated, valuing the company at $555 million. This substantial backing underscores investor confidence in Reflection AI's approach to autonomous coding and its potential market impact.