Anthropic and OpenAI just got a $25B competitor — and it's offering its AI model for free. Is your 401(k) at risk?

What’s more, Beam is set to be open-weight as well, making it possible for people to run it for free on their own computers.

Here’s what Beam’s designed for, as well as how it might indirectly impact your retirement savings.

New open-weight model Beam says it’s built for vibe coding

Beam is designed for use in the workplace, helping people vibe code and handling multi-step tasks with little human intervention.

Right now, many of the best-performing AI models for coding are closed weight, meaning you can’t just download them for personal use on your own computer. For instance, different models of Claude, Gemini and GPT make up eight of the top-ten-ranked models on SWE-bench, which ranks models based on their ability to handle real-world coding tasks.

Both of the open-weight models — MiniMax M2.5 and GLM 5 — are Chinese models. If Beam is as good as Reflection claims, it could be the first U.S.-developed open-weight model to make SWE-bench’s top 10.

If Beam catches on, this could be a significant blow to Anthropic and OpenAI. The timing is especially terrible for Anthropic, which is planning its IPO in November. Reflection says it will release Beam’s weights, along with documentation, later this month.

OpenAI is also planning on becoming a public company soon, although its timing is not as definite as Anthropic’s.

Even with new competition, your retirement fund is probably safe

As long as the S&P 500 is over-reliant on AI stocks performing well, there are some risks to your portfolio when AI companies do poorly.

If that fact concerns you, then now’s a great time to check in on your 401(k). Are you currently in an S&P 500 index fund? If so, it might be a good idea to diversify your portfolio into different asset classes so you aren’t overexposed.