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See the pitch memo that raised €105M for four-week-old startup Mistral

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Re: See the pitch memo that raised €105M for four-week-old startup Mistral

#41

Post by user_named »

cracrecry wrote: post #25

For me it is clear that they have given that much money expecting they can get back way more having access to EU bureaucracy. In the EU bureaucracy is huge and they spend billions on taxpayer money. It really doesn't matter if those billions are wasted away or not. I have a company and I have to talk with EU politicians, most of them are clueless regarding technology, but they spend billions anyway, so you need to ta…

Since they didn't even bother to create a deck, it seems to me that they were promised this investment already, and making the pitch was just a formality. "Create a company and we'll give you 100m funding", is how I imagine it went.

Second, seems like all six founding members are French, so this is really a French company, not a European one. Other countries will need to create their own becwof this.

Re: See the pitch memo that raised €105M for four-week-old startup Mistral

#42

Post by Oras »

> OpenAI and its current competitors have embraced a closed technology approach, which will dramatically reduce their market reach.

Did it really reduced their market reach?

However, for me the key differentiators are:

- US is leading, EU is behind.

- The team. Very impressive team.

Re: See the pitch memo that raised €105M for four-week-old startup Mistral

#43

Post by user_named »

poulpy123 wrote: post #19

While I fully support a french effort to be competitive in the AI industry, the memo is mostly empty apart for the 1 line bio of the team members that could or could not show the seriousness of the project. I hope that it's just the "executive" summary and that there is a real, detailled memo behind the $100 millions and that it's not just another "let's fund our friends" from the local capitalist class

I believe they were promised the money before the company existed, that they started the company on the behest of the funders.

Re: See the pitch memo that raised €105M for four-week-old startup Mistral

#44

Post by boeingUH60 »

cracrecry wrote: post #25

For me it is clear that they have given that much money expecting they can get back way more having access to EU bureaucracy. In the EU bureaucracy is huge and they spend billions on taxpayer money. It really doesn't matter if those billions are wasted away or not. I have a company and I have to talk with EU politicians, most of them are clueless regarding technology, but they spend billions anyway, so you need to ta…

> Cédric O, Former French Secretary of State for Digital Affairs.

A member of the team.

Re: See the pitch memo that raised €105M for four-week-old startup Mistral

#45

Post by meinheld111 »

ddorian43 wrote: post #5

Anyone reached out to them to see what wages they're offering? Edit: Trying to see how they will compete with US based on paying EU salaries in a world that is becoming increasingly more remote.

Idk but it seems generally not trivial to compare salaries because te hole shebang of social externalities and work environment.

Afaik us salaries include neither retirement funds nor medical insurance, probably more missing.

Re: See the pitch memo that raised €105M for four-week-old startup Mistral

#46

Post by rsynnott »

cracrecry wrote: post #25

For me it is clear that they have given that much money expecting they can get back way more having access to EU bureaucracy. In the EU bureaucracy is huge and they spend billions on taxpayer money. It really doesn't matter if those billions are wasted away or not. I have a company and I have to talk with EU politicians, most of them are clueless regarding technology, but they spend billions anyway, so you need to ta…

> In the EU bureaucracy is huge and they spend billions on taxpayer money.

This is a fairly popular belief, but the EU's bureaucracy is actually pretty small. The entire EU civil service is only 40,000 people, most of them part time. Ireland is an EU country with about 1% the population of the EU, and also has about 40,000 civil servants, and 300,000 people in the wider public service.

1% of the per-capita civil servant requirements of an actual country really seems very lightweight.

(The US federal civil service is 2.8m people, but this isn't a great comparison, as it handles a lot of stuff that in the EU would be the domain on national civil/public service)

Re: See the pitch memo that raised €105M for four-week-old startup Mistral

#47

Post by Clueed »

ToJans wrote: post #38

Reading through the memo, the GTM/use cases/market seem to be void of any kind of beachhead strategy? I see lots of technical stuff, but the complete business plan & roadmap seems to be lacking any kind of tangible use case that is showing me how they plan to differentiate? (The technical reasons they state seem to be fairy minimal, and I don't see anything that competitors couldn't do either.) The reason that I'm we…

I've read it like this: They differentiate themselves from OpenAI/Anthropic/other major players by being in the EU and (more) open-source; they differentiate themselves from other European competitors by being as good as OpenAI. I think it's a fine proposition given the early market and their team, as long as this hypothesis holds true for years to come,

> we believe that most of the value in the emerging generative AI market will be located in the hard-to-make technology, i.e. the generative models themselves,

and they truly can compete with market leaders.

Re: See the pitch memo that raised €105M for four-week-old startup Mistral

#48

Post by ToJans »

Clueed wrote: post #47
ToJans wrote: post #38

Reading through the memo, the GTM/use cases/market seem to be void of any kind of beachhead strategy? I see lots of technical stuff, but the complete business plan & roadmap seems to be lacking any kind of tangible use case that is showing me how they plan to differentiate? (The technical reasons they state seem to be fairy minimal, and I don't see anything that competitors couldn't do either.) The reason that I'm we…

I've read it like this: They differentiate themselves from OpenAI/Anthropic/other major players by being in the EU and (more) open-source; they differentiate themselves from other European competitors by being as good as OpenAI. I think it's a fine proposition given the early market and their team, as long as this hypothesis holds true for years to come, > we believe that most of the value in the emerging generative…

Ok, so they're aiming for a more "spray & pray" kind of GTM, challenging the incumbents based on the premise that it'll be EU based.

This basically then boils down to: "ChatGPT got x users in a week, and we want to do the same for EU.", without a clear path to profitability or guarantees.

So it's effectively a humongously risky bet by EU VCs?

Re: See the pitch memo that raised €105M for four-week-old startup Mistral

#49

Post by djoldman »

Memo link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gquqRqiT-2Be85p_5w0izGQGgHv...

> We believe that most of the value in the emerging generative AI market will be located in the hard-to-make technology, i.e. the generative models themselves.

This may be true, but it will be a lot easier to target usability and niche use cases than the modeling...

Re: See the pitch memo that raised €105M for four-week-old startup Mistral

#50

Post by Shrezzing »

TrackerFF wrote: post #33

I don't know, the pitch seemed generic? Seems to me that it's the team + market that won the money.

> Seems to me that it's the team + market that won the money.

That's pretty much it. Most analysts expect there's an addressable market of $20bn this year, growing to $100bn per year by the end of the decade. The market will be split between four or five companies. The number of people globally with the required expertise to create these models is in the tens (generously one hundred individuals). Three of those people are involved in this company now, and another five are joining in the next few weeks, each leaving senior positions at competitors.

This one company has secured something in the order of 5-10% of the global talent pool for a $100bn/yr industry.

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