The $6 billion AI startup of Europe

Startup Story of Mistral AI

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.

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 Advantage

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.

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

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.

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.

Growth of talent working in AI & ML 📈

In 2024, the European AI sector, including the Mistral AI deal, has seen six deals exceeding $100 million, compared to 24 such deals in the US. Despite having fewer large deals and a clear funding gap, Europe has had a higher number of people working in AI roles since 2019, with a tenfold increase over the past decade. Is Europe positioning itself to lead the next generation of artificial intelligence? How does the new EU regulation come into play?

To understand the key reasons and deeper insights behind this trend, catch our Thursday publication on SearchVentures Premium.

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