Mistral returns to work

Hundreds of heads of state and executives of technology and non -profit organizations flocked to Paris for The summit of artificial intelligence work. To date, it seems that the winner of the diplomatic and commercial offer this week mistake. In Lingo Business, we say that the French AI Unionon suffers from the back wind.

Mistral was one of the leading artificial intelligence companies in Europe. Originally, she released some impressive Open weight models In the back of attention to many large linguistic models, artificial intelligence, and open source approach, she managed to collect more than a billion dollars in a very few time.

However, its effect was fading over the past few months – not the least of them because of what happened with the LLM startups across the ponds.

Openai raised a total of 18 billion dollars – and may be captured soon Other $ 40 billion While a person has received about 8 billion dollars. At the same time, Chinese competitors such as Deepseek released open -weight models that perform better than Mistral models.

Mistral could not outperform Deepseek or overcome American competitors. But the AI ​​Action Summit came in time to change the narration about the start of the French operation.

Now, Mistral is serious at work.

“We have moved from a scientific company that focused on making the most powerful models for laptops at that time, to a company that now provides solutions to institutions, which are customized applications, which bring knowledge and productivity to workers,” said co -founder and CEO Arthur Minche at the summit.

Last week, the company Le Chat released On iOS and Android, AI assistant is designed for both consumers and institutions. This week, it appears to benefit from an unprecedented support campaign from the best policy makers in France.

“Go and download Le Chat, which was made by Mistral, instead of Chatgpt by Openai or anything else,” French President Emmanuel Macron said in a television interview on Sunday evening. We want them to invest in France and develop partnerships. When you download it, you help a European champion, a French champion. You create job opportunities here, but you also make them stronger. This is what sovereignty revolves around. “

Le Chat is currently the most downloaded iOS app in France. However, the application does not really start in other European markets. It is currently in Germany No. 66, and it has not been listed in the 100 best applications in Spain, Italy and the United Kingdom

Renew the focus on the institution’s market

But Mistral is not betting on its company on the success of the consumer: and until now, she expects to make money from the institution’s agents, and in part, this event in Paris has turned into a Mistral show to talk about how it works on this front.

We have made a partnership with France Travele (National Employment Agency). Minsh said in a TV interview With TF1 on Sunday. “We have also made a partnership with Veolia to improve the efficiency of its plants (wastewater) … so that they can understand what is going on in their factories at any specific moment.”

At the AI ​​Action Summit, John Elkann, President of Stelantis, announced a large -scale deal with Mistral. “We are already doing a lot of things in conjunction with our internal organization,” Elcan said.

By the end of the year, the car manufacturer will behind Peugeot, Citroën, FIAT and Jeep Brands update its mobile application to include replacing the owner’s guide with the helpful -energy artificial intelligence assistant. Ideally, this is a first step in a greater relationship.

“With our progress, we believe that drivers will ask for information and control the car through artificial intelligence, through the web connections, but also the embedded devices that work on the edge, which are much more efficient, and Minche said:

Mistral said it’s too Partnership with HelingIt is a European defense company that works on drones and electronic components in European combat aircraft. In this case, Mistral works on new “vision language models” that are likely to operate on edge devices.

At least at the present time, the company has a couple of its mountain in terms of what can be provided to institutional customers.

Mistral allows you to publish chat in your environment with custom models and a custom user interface. If you are working in defense or banking services, you may need to be able to spread Amnesty International Assistant to a hypothesis. This is currently not possible with Enterprise Enterprise or Claude Enterprise.

Mistral also offers border models through the application programming interface that developers can use in their own applications.

With the Helsing partnership in particular, Mistral proves that it is important to have a European hero of artificial intelligence. Now, let’s see whether Mistral can persuade other European countries that they can also rely on a European provider.

“Mistral is the opportunity of Europe and we only have one chance. Nicholas Dofork, CEO of BPIFRANCE, said:“ Everyone must work with Mistral. ”(It also happens that BPIFRANCE is an early contributor to Ai French.) Duffourcq also added that he needs bad Revenue to generate 500 million euros in 2025 ($ 515 million at current exchange rates).

This will be a flagrant leap compared to the revenues of 2024. According to multiple sources, Mistral had only tens of millions of euros in revenue in 2024.

There are other challenges in front of it due to the fragmentation of the European market. Many of those present at the AI ​​Action Summit were skeptical of the willingness of other European countries to bet on a French player.

Meanwhile, the Paris -based company wants to control its fate when it comes to infrastructure. Its CEO has announced plans to invest “billions” in the artificial intelligence data center. “We will do our work and invest several billion euros in a group, which will be created in Essonne, so that we can train more efficient systems in just a few months,” said Minsh.

Details are still thin on this front. It is not clear whether Mistral will work with a third -party partner to finance the data center or raise a new financing round to build one itself.

In the latter case, Mistral may require inspiration from BrainAn American company of artificial intelligence specializes in rapid reasoning that already works with Mistral to accelerate the answers of its Chatbot product, le chat.

The majority of brain revenue currently comes from the Emirati AI Holding Company G42. With the high competition temperature between the United States and China, Mistral may search for a third path, independent of large American technology companies and Chinese capital. Can this mean searching for money in the Middle East?