French Startup Mistral Launches Application Amid Tight Competition AI

Arthur Mensch, CEO and co-founder of Mistral AI (photo: x @TheAIForge ·)

JAKARTA French artificial intelligence (AI) startup Mistral AI, backed by Nvidia, officially launched a new app for its generative AI software on Thursday, February 6. The launch comes just a month after DeepSeek, a Chinese AI company, released its newest AI assistant that surprised the global market with advanced technology and lower prices than its US competitors.

The AI Mistral, based in Paris and founded two years ago, claims that their open-source AI assistant, Le Chat, uses one of the world's fastest inference machines, capable of responding up to 1,000 words per second.

The launch comes ahead of the AI Action Summit in Paris, which further highlights the importance of AI players from Europe.

"France and the world are starting to realize that European players have an important role and offer cutting-edge technology," said Arthur Mensch, CEO and co-founder of Mistral AI.

Although the AI Mistral valuation has reached 5.8 billion euros (IDR 98.1 trillion) and has financial support from chip giant AI Nvidia, the company is still less popular than ChatGPT. OpenAI reported last August that ChatGPT has 200 million weekly active users, while Le Chat is only used by "a few million subscribers on a regular basis," Mensch said.

Interestingly, Mensch also mentioned that DeepSek has utilized open-source technology shared by Mistral in 2023 to develop its products.

"DeepSeek is not something that surprised us. We are a company that builds open-source solution-based products, so when there is new open-source technology, we also get the benefits," said Mensch.

Mensch emphasized the importance of alternative AI from Europe to compete with products from China and the United States.

"There is a cultural dimension in AI, and now everyone is starting to realize that. It's also about creating technology champions from Europe, and that's the reason we founded the Mistral," he said.

This new Mistral application was previously only available through a web browser, but has now been released in a more user-friendly version. In addition, Mistral AI has also started working with several large companies, including Veolia, a French water and waste management company.

Recently, Mistral also announced partnerships with French labor agencies, and according to Mensch, they still have other projects with European authorities in the process of negotiating.

Even so, compared to the US tech giant, the number of Mistral partnerships is still relatively small. Moreover, US AI companies are expected to benefit more from the Stargate project launched by US President Donald Trump.

Mistral AI has managed to raise more than 1 billion euros in funding so far. However, when asked about the possible initial share offering (IPO), Mensch said that it was "not a short-term ambition at all."

With the launch of its new application and the increasing number of companies seeking alternative AI apart from the US and China, Mistral AI has ambitions to become a generative AI leader in Europe.