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

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

#101

Post by kergonath »

TMWNN wrote: post #92
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Trump has done more for NATO rearmament than any US president in history Putin did that. To the degree Trump's statements have had an effect, it's in deharmonizing trans-Atlantic military coöperation. (EDIT: Trump and Putin had similar effects. See [1].) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39540275

>Putin did that. No. As I said, not even an actual land war in Europe has been as effective as Trump's mean words in getting Western Europe to actually get off their butts regarding defense.

You said that, but it does not make it true. Trump rocked the boat but did fuck all.

The truth is that for many European countries military defence is was a bit of an abstract concept, with no real enemy nearby and no really interventionist foreign policies. Letting NATO rot was not a big problem in that context. What changed everything was when an enemy willing to use its military in a war in Europe materialised.

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

#102

Post by smoldesu »

anonylizard wrote: post #93
malermeister wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about antitrust. It's about national security.

This is the second problem with the EU. They can't defend their own backyard, refuses to pay for their 2%, and free-rides off of US protection. They tried to court China as their partner, only to now face a flood of Chinese car imports that outcompete their once prided industries. They seem to only care about national security when it comes to fleecing US companies, rather than say defending against Russia, or strate…

> They seem to only care about national security when it comes to fleecing US companies

Stop with that nonsense. Every single country that imports American goods has regulations on how it is imported. Your expectations are misaligned if you think the concept of a Free Market extends to other countries carte-blanche. Not even the United States can stop itself from regulating it's own businesses, and usually it's for the better.

These comments pop-up all the time but never have a reasonable alternative to suggest. This is what governance looks like; I'm sorry if you're offended on Apple or Microsoft's behalf.

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

#103

Post by kergonath »

sanxiyn wrote: post #53
wongarsu wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU generally doesn't act on the market like that. This isn't China or Soviet Russia after all, we are still operating under a form of capitalism. The EU does offer grants, but those are generally meant for projects that wouldn't get money on the free market

Isn't Norway operating under a form of capitalism as well as owning controlling share of Statoil? Why mention China or Russia? I guess Norway is not a member of EU.

The EU is not a state. There is no possible way of having something like nationalisation at the EU level. So whilst nationalised companies exist in different member-states (almost all of them, I would think), the EU still cannot do that.

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

#104

Post by smoldesu »

TMWNN wrote: post #88
nerdponx wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because literally the entire world is betting on their technology right now. I can't imagine that being located in the US is the cause for Nvidia being in the right place at the right time with CUDA.

>That's because literally the entire world is betting on their technology right now. I can't imagine that being located in the US is the cause for Nvidia being in the right place at the right time with CUDA. Ah yes, feel free to name all the other European startups that are in the right place at the right time with their own technology. Maybe one of these days you'll acknowledge that there may be a reason why such co…

> feel free to name all the other European startups that are in the right place at the right time with their own technology.

For starters, there's ARM and STMicroelectronics. Then all the classical household-name businesses like SAAB, Phillips, Nokia, Siemens et. al. However, there's also more recent "SF-style" startups like Spotify, TransferWise and Klarna. Take your pick?

> Where were the European GPU startups back in the 1990s, let alone today?

Imagination Technologies was a pretty big name for a while: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_PowerVR_products

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

#105

Post by Scarblac »

TMWNN wrote: post #88
nerdponx wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because literally the entire world is betting on their technology right now. I can't imagine that being located in the US is the cause for Nvidia being in the right place at the right time with CUDA.

>That's because literally the entire world is betting on their technology right now. I can't imagine that being located in the US is the cause for Nvidia being in the right place at the right time with CUDA. Ah yes, feel free to name all the other European startups that are in the right place at the right time with their own technology. Maybe one of these days you'll acknowledge that there may be a reason why such co…

Most of ASML's technology was developed at ASML. Yes, not all, and there are US patents. But there was an insane amount of work they did in making it reality (together with Zeiss).

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

#106

Post by h_ko »

anonylizard wrote: post #34
throwaway55671 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

385M USD is way too much for EU investors. They usually invest 10x-100x less. So the alternative without US investors would be to have no startup of this kind - great job, that will really help EU grow!

What makes US investors so uniquely ambitious and generous? I'm starting to appreciate the US financial sector more and more.

Pension funds. European pensions are run as insurances and/or financed via taxes. Thus, there is no investment capital from pensions. The U.S. is quite the opposite, and that fact alone probably explains > 60% of the gap in VC financing.

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

#107

Post by dukeyukey »

nerdponx wrote: post #57
throwaway55671 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who said infinite? Startup founders that got investments have designed the exit points based on market conditions, and nobody would trust "infinite". It's just like stock investments (unless you "invest" based on feelings, of course) - you calculate the risk, the potential, and then you decide. Nobody reasonable puts "infinite growth" into their Excel sheets. And yes, growing until that exit point is a lot of work -…

The market expects infinite growth. Imagine what would happen if a publicly-traded company announced that they would stop pursuing growth.

Of course it doesn't expect infinite growth. Companies _aim_ for it, but nobody expects them to do it.

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

#108

Post by JumpCrisscross »

TMWNN wrote: post #92
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Trump has done more for NATO rearmament than any US president in history Putin did that. To the degree Trump's statements have had an effect, it's in deharmonizing trans-Atlantic military coöperation. (EDIT: Trump and Putin had similar effects. See [1].) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39540275

>Putin did that. No. As I said, not even an actual land war in Europe has been as effective as Trump's mean words in getting Western Europe to actually get off their butts regarding defense.

> not even an actual land war in Europe has been as effective as Trump's mean words in getting Western Europe to actually get off their butts regarding defense

Putin and Trump appeared to have played similar roles in increasing European defence spending, with Putin beating out Trump (but not by much).

Let's look at Ex-US NATO defence expenditure as a fraction of GDP from 2017 to 2020 in comparison with 2014 to 2016 [1]. On average it rose +13 bps, 1.43% to 1.56%, (p = 0.09, unpaired t-test). Not statisfically significant. Same for '17 to '20 versus '21 to '23: +12 bps, 1.56% to 1.69% (p = 0.13).

Looking broader, '14 to '16 versus '17 to '23, we get +18.6 bps (p = 0.02) for Trump. Significant! But if we do the same for Putin, '14 to '20 versus '21 to '23, we get +18.1 bps (p = 0.02). Also significant! (And uncannily similar.)

Seeing the above, I get why there is an impasse. The data support an insignificant conclusion for giving the entire effect to Trump or Putin with low confidence. They more significantly support giving half the effect to each. Given we're "crediting" (in the high-confidence analysis) '21 to '23 to both, and Putin's effects have manifested over just 2 years, that makes the claim that Trump did more to boost ex-US NATO defence spending than Putin technically incorrect. But only technically.

(Would note that a t-test for such data isn't really correct, so would take the above as casual calculations.)

[1] https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/2023/7/pd... Table 3

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

#109

Post by DANmode »

guhidalg wrote: post #67
nerdponx wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would have an anti-trust problem if somebody went out and bought all of the promising AI startups. So at what point in their buying spree do you cut them off? Do you wait until they've bought 90% of AI startups? 50%? Does it matter if there are 4 AI startups or 40?

It starts to matter when the broad public is adversely affected by the lack of AI diversity. I don’t think we’re there yet, let them buy.

From my perspective, the only name and products people (who are not here) know are ChatGPT/OpenAI API based.

Do you have a different experience?

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

#110

Post by dukeyukey »

kmlx wrote: post #100
neverrroot wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Top companies from Stoxx 50: LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton (422B Euro) ASML (347B) L'Oréal (241B) Hermès (240B) SAP (203B) Totalenergies (142B) Siemens (140B) For comparison, Spotify is only 50B.

isn't Stoxx 50 just the EU? i think you're missing some huge players (Shell, Novo Nordisk etc) but to get back to the general point, that list looks kind of bleak to me. bags, makeup and oil. at least there's ASML in there (i hope they won't have a reason to move their listing to NYC).

> isn't Stoxx 50 just the EU? i

Not even that, it's just the Eurozone. So it's missing most of Scandinavia and the UK, which are probably the most 'techy' economies in Europe.

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