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Europe probes Microsoft's €15M stake in AI upstart Mistral

theregister.com

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Re: Europe probes Microsoft's €15M stake in AI upstart Mistral

#11

Post by throwaway55671 »

Filligree wrote: post #8
throwaway55671 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doing all the work and taking all the stress only to have the EU remove a chance of growth and exit is a problem that I never want to have. I went through some failed startups, and at least that was our own fault, but still I never want to do that again. I don't know what I'd do in this situation.

Why is "exit" always the goal? Why not go on growing?

Perhaps the founders want to remain there and grow, perhaps they want to focus on something else or retire. Perhaps the plan always was to sell after X years - I don't see anything wrong about that, still better to innovate&sell than just buy stock&sell IMHO.

You can't attract investors if they can't sell in case the investment is successful. This is severely limiting and a terrible situation to be in - especially if you already have investors, who might demand their money back from you - way before your profits could cover it.

And the worst thing that might happen - you design a startup to be acquired by Microsoft/Apple/Google and then EU comes and says no. WTF?

Re: Europe probes Microsoft's €15M stake in AI upstart Mistral

#12

Post by gkedzierski »

neverrroot wrote: post #4
mesmertech wrote: post #2

Love it as a consumer because Mistral is probably not doing any more open weights if they get tangled with Microsoft. But man, as a business owner in EU, this would just make me not want to build an AI startup in EU

It's tough, it's also part of the reason so little is done here, just compare the size of market capitalization of say DAX40 (German top 40) or CAC40 (French top 40): DAX40 $1.9T CAC40 $2.8T There are single companies in US that exceed both of these values.

EURO STOXX 50 would probably be a better benchmark, which has a total market cap of around €4.0T, which is more than any single company. (your general point stands though, it's nowhere near the US market)

Re: Europe probes Microsoft's €15M stake in AI upstart Mistral

#13

Post by malermeister »

mnau wrote: post #7
ljm wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine there has to be some kind of security implication here, the same reason why the US is restricting the export of AI chipsets to china. It's not ideal if US megacorps are heavily investing in or buying out EU AI startups.

EU has to tech scene, so it doesn't want a potentially successful project to be transferred to US. What is the most biggest EU software company? SAP?

SAP and Spotify come to mind, more recent promising startups are this one and Stable Diffusion.

Re: Europe probes Microsoft's €15M stake in AI upstart Mistral

#14

Post by yieldcrv »

Filligree wrote: post #8
throwaway55671 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doing all the work and taking all the stress only to have the EU remove a chance of growth and exit is a problem that I never want to have. I went through some failed startups, and at least that was our own fault, but still I never want to do that again. I don't know what I'd do in this situation.

Why is "exit" always the goal? Why not go on growing?

I think that’s the wrong question too

Even growth should be questioned holistically when you can literally make a few million dollars once and be done with it

instead of every quarter while pretending that making the same or lesser amounts are disasters

Re: Europe probes Microsoft's €15M stake in AI upstart Mistral

#15

Post by Scarblac »

neverrroot wrote: post #4
mesmertech wrote: post #2

Love it as a consumer because Mistral is probably not doing any more open weights if they get tangled with Microsoft. But man, as a business owner in EU, this would just make me not want to build an AI startup in EU

It's tough, it's also part of the reason so little is done here, just compare the size of market capitalization of say DAX40 (German top 40) or CAC40 (French top 40): DAX40 $1.9T CAC40 $2.8T There are single companies in US that exceed both of these values.

Part of that is that you're taking a fixed number of companies. So if Europe has more, but smaller companies, the value of the top-40 would be lower than if they had fewer but larger companies. To me the first sounds healthier, everything else being equal.

Re: Europe probes Microsoft's €15M stake in AI upstart Mistral

#16

Post by fvdessen »

api wrote: post #10
mnau wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EU has to tech scene, so it doesn't want a potentially successful project to be transferred to US. What is the most biggest EU software company? SAP?

Tech is like film. Big unicorns with big exits are like the blockbuster tent pole superhero films that net hundreds of millions of dollars. You don’t have those the whole industry collapses. No art flicks or risky experiments with new ideas without Guardians of the Galaxy. It’s not just investment capital which usually grows out of exits but also the whole ecosystem of services and consultants and experts and law fir…

Regulations are not a problem, it's the lack of a big common market. Expanding from let's say Belgium to Germany is almost as difficult as expanding to the USA. That's why the two countries that have a big tech scenes (US/China) are the ones that have big unified markets.

Re: Europe probes Microsoft's €15M stake in AI upstart Mistral

#17

Post by rsynnott »

mesmertech wrote: post #2

Love it as a consumer because Mistral is probably not doing any more open weights if they get tangled with Microsoft. But man, as a business owner in EU, this would just make me not want to build an AI startup in EU

> But man, as a business owner in EU, this would just make me not want to build an AI startup in EU

Like, purely on the basis that MS might not be allowed to take you over?

TBH I'd assume the FTC would at least be asking questions here, too. EC and FTC thinking on competition is generally not all _that_ different, but the EC tends to be quicker to act these days (this was not always the case; the FTC was very much out in front on Intel and Internet Explorer back in the day).

Re: Europe probes Microsoft's €15M stake in AI upstart Mistral

#18

Post by BlueTemplar »

Goodroo wrote: post #9
mnau wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EU has to tech scene, so it doesn't want a potentially successful project to be transferred to US. What is the most biggest EU software company? SAP?

That China has a more vibrant tech scene than Europe is a real shame.

And yet China's relative success is due to protectionism (or failed antitrust in USA/EU).

In a "winner takes all" situation, how else can the EU compete ? (The US did protectionism too while their industries were fledgling, to avoid getting crushed by the British...)

Re: Europe probes Microsoft's €15M stake in AI upstart Mistral

#19

Post by throwaway55671 »

yieldcrv wrote: post #14
Filligree wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is "exit" always the goal? Why not go on growing?

I think that’s the wrong question too Even growth should be questioned holistically when you can literally make a few million dollars once and be done with it instead of every quarter while pretending that making the same or lesser amounts are disasters

Few million dollars split by how many people? A small startup that provided a decent exit for me was sold for 50M EUR. I got 100K from that - the company had over 1000 shareholders. That's not really life changing amount of money, was barely enough to get a mortgage for my small apartment (30% of the price).

BTW the company was failing. If we didn't sell we'd have 0 very soon. It's really not as easy as "well let's just grow I guess".

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