In recent years,generative artificial intelligence has been dominated by US and Chinese companies, with OpenAI, DeepSeek and DeepMind leading the way, while Europe seems to have remained on the sidelines of this technological revolution. In response to this situation, a group of former Meta and Google DeepMind researchers founded Mistral AI in 2023 in France, with the aim of creating a credible alternative in the AI market.

Backed by prominent investors such as Microsoft and Andreessen Horowitz, and with a valuation that recently reached $6 billion, Mistral AI is emerging as a competitive player in the industry, offering alternatives to the ecosystem dominated by OpenAI, DeepSeek, Google DeepMind and Anthropic.

Open source and business models

Mistral AI takes a hybrid approach, offering both high-performance commercial models, available via API, and open source models, freely accessible and optimised for computational efficiency.

The company’s flagship is Mistral Large 2, an advanced LLM that stands as a direct competitor to leading models in the field ofgenerative AI such as ChatGPT 4.

Mistral AI ‘s open source models are available free of charge under the Apache 2.0 licence, with no restrictions on use. Among them are:

• Mistral 7B, designed to be lightweight and easily customisable.
• Mixtral 8x7B, optimised for high performance with minimal computational effort.

Le Chat

In addition to its LLMs, Mistral AI offers Le Chat, an AI chatbot capable of generating content and interacting with users, similar to platforms such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude.

Mistral AI also allows users to choose which of its models to use according to their needs:

• Mistral Large for the best reasoning.
• Mistral Small for speed and cost efficiency.
• Mistral Next for concise answers.
• Mistral Large 2 for further experimentation.

However, Le Chat does not have real-time access to the Internet; it works using a large database of information updated until 1 October 2023, so its answers may not always be up-to-date.

Le Chat is available free of charge at chat.mistral.ai/chat.

Mistral AI has developed a pay-as-you-go version dedicated to professional customers, offering advanced functionality and integration into corporate systems. This version makes it possible to automate responses, manage customer interactions efficiently and adapt to different operational needs, while ensuring compliance with European privacy and data security regulations.

The future of Mistral AI and the role of Europe

The rise of Mistral AI shows thatEurope can play a leading role in the field ofgenerative artificial intelligence, offering a credible alternative to American and Chinese giants. Thanks to its hybrid approach, combining high-performance commercial models with affordable open source solutions, the French company is rapidly gaining ground in the global market.

However, to really compete with giants like OpenAI and DeepSeek, stronger support from Europe is needed. Strategic investments, innovation support policies and collaborations with academic and industrial institutions could allow Mistral AI to consolidate itself as a true leader in the field, ensuring Europe a prominent position in the evolution ofartificial intelligence.

If properly supported, Mistral AI could become Europe’s first major player ingenerative AI, helping to reduce the EU’s technological dependence and offering a strategic alternative to American and Chinese solutions.