The $6 billion AI startup of Europe

The French AI startup taking on Silicon Valley

Mistral AI is Europe's entry into the race for AI. Their mission is to democratize AI by making high-performance models accessible to the public. Unlike expensive models restricted to large companies, Mistral AI’s open-source models are low-cost and customizable, offering powerful tools for smaller companies and developers.

‍“We aimed to create a powerful, efficient model that democratizes access to advanced AI technologies”

‍Their primary model, Mistral 7B, is designed to support 80 programming languages and handle tasks such as language processing, code creation, and data analysis while remaining open-source for public use.

‍The Open-Source Founders

‍Arthur Mensch, Guillaume Lample, and Timothée Lacroix co-founded Mistral AI in early 2023. Together the trio brought extensive experience working on machine learning and AI models they were developing at DeepMind and Meta. Noticing that the trend towards closed, proprietary models at major tech companies was stifling innovation and eliminating user collaboration and transparency, they left their corporate roles to create Mistral AI.

With only 91 employees, Mistral has a much smaller team compared to the 2,000 employees at OpenAI or the 182,000 at Google. Despite this, they have managed to create AI models that rank second in performance, just behind those of OpenAI. The founders attribute this success to their commitment to open-source development.

‍“We believe that open-source is the way forward for AI. It allows us to out-innovate by leveraging community feedback to accelerate the development cycle.”‍

‍Will Mistral AI Outpace The US?

‍Mistral AI’s open-source strategy and cost-efficient models position it as a serious competitor to US giants like OpenAI and Google. Their commitment to transparency and community collaboration sets them apart, potentially disrupting the dominance of proprietary models.Having partnered with Microsoft and Snowflake, they have made significant steps towards reducing the compute costs of these models. By focusing on smaller, highly efficient models, they have minimized the resources needed for the training and deployment of their AI models, resulting in data costs that are 60% lower than OpenAI’s.

‍“It's super important to get to a state where using these AI models is super cheap, so that AI can be used everywhere without cost barriers.”

‍Looking ahead, Mistral AI aims to expand its model offerings and continue its focus on making AI accessible and affordable. Having raised $600 million in its most recent Series B, the startup is set to expand the team and invest heavily in the scalability of its products.