Paris-based Mistral wanted to develop a top-tier AI model to rival OpenAI and Anthropic. That didn’t work out. But it turns out lots of folks don’t care if the AI is bleeding edge – as long as it wasn’t made in America or China.

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… [Cofounder and CEO of Mistral Arthur] Mensch’s vision for Mistral, and AI itself, can be summed up in one word: independence. Unlike its black-box Silicon Valley rivals, most of Mistral’s AI models are what techies call “open weight.” In this sort of open-source model, customers are free to get under the hood, customize the AI using their own data or download it for free to run offline (or from a laptop).

The message resonates. Old-school execs are spooked by the world-consuming rhetoric of OpenAI and Anthropic and the emerging threat of Chinese AI companies. Mensch’s talk of control and sovereignty is soothing, as is his pitch that Mistral will deploy engineers to set up and run the tech for them. Your data doesn’t even need to leave the office, let alone the country.

“We are really the only company that allows [building] core business automation and products on top of an open stack, and that is something that is valuable everywhere in the world,” says Mensch, 33, from Mistral’s offices in the trendy 10th arrondissement of Paris, as kids play soccer in the courtyard out back.

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