Reflection Beam, Mistral Le Chonk & the Drone That Delivers Your Chipotle

Josh Machiz is joined by Shaurya Aggarwal, a partner on Lightspeed's growth team, for the week the West showed up to the open model fight. Reflection unveiled Beam on Monday, and Mistral unveiled Large 4, better known as Le Chonk, on Tuesday. Shaurya explains what open weights actually buy you, why both companies are competing on intelligence per dollar instead of chasing the frontier, and he breaks down mixture of experts in a way that makes the huge parameter counts finally make sense. Only about 5% of Beam wakes up for any given token. Lightspeed led Mistral's inception round and has invested in every round since, and co-led Reflection's Series A.Then DoorDash, which showed a delivery drone it designed itself plus an AI agent you can text to order. Shaurya's take is that the marketplace is the moat, and building its own agent is offense and defense at once against the assistants people already use. On that note, Instinct can now join your group chat, and Meta and Sierra announced an open standard for how personal agents work with businesses. Finally Oura, which called off its Nasdaq IPO hours before pricing despite heavy demand, and what that says about late stage growth investing. Plus updates from RobCo and Avarra. Lightspeed led RobCo's Series B, co-led its Series C and participated in this round, and led Avarra's seed and participated in its Series A.Chapters:00:00 Open Models, Drone Delivery, and AI Agents01:08 Mistral's Le Chonk Meme and Naming Story02:33 What Open-Weight Models Mean for the AI Race03:56 When to Choose Open Models Over Frontier AI05:30 Why Open Models Compete on Cost Efficiency06:35 Mixture of Experts Explained07:32 Is Reflection the DeepSeek of the West?07:58 Why DoorDash Is Building Its Own Delivery Drones09:38 DoorDash's Competitive Edge 12:28 DoorDash's Moat Against AI Agents14:34 Personal AI Agents in Group Chats16:08 How AI Agents Could Change Consumer Spending17:26 Meta, Sierra, and the Future of Personal AI Agents19:56 Oura Postpones Its IPO22:13 Lightspeed UniverseStay in touch: www.lsvp.comX:   / lightspeedvp  LinkedIn:   / lightspeed-venture-partners  Instagram:   / lightspeedventurepartners  The content here does not constitute tax, legal, business or investment advice or an offer to provide such advice, should not be construed as advocating the purchase or sale of any security or investment or a recommendation of any company, and is not an offer, or solicitation of an offer, for the purchase or sale of any security or investment product. The views expressed by our guests do not necessarily represent the views of Lightspeed. For more details please see lsvp.com/legal.Reflection Beam, Mistral Le Chonk & the Drone That Delivers Your Chipotle | Lightwork   • Reflection Beam, Mistral Le Chonk & the Dr...