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Mistral raises 1.7B€, partners with ASML

mistral.ai

41–50 of 437 posts

Re: Mistral raises 1.7B€, partners with ASML

#41

I don’t really get why ASML is putting money into Mistral AI. ASML is specialized in lithography machines. Mistral, on the other hand, is yet another LLM startup. What’s the actual synergy here? The closest angle I can imagine is that AI workloads drive demand for more chips, but I believe ASML is already selling everything it can make.

The most strategic move ASML can make is change its licensing structure such that Apple will have to pay 30% of their revenue for using their Fab platform.

Re: Mistral raises 1.7B€, partners with ASML

#42

I don’t really get why ASML is putting money into Mistral AI. ASML is specialized in lithography machines. Mistral, on the other hand, is yet another LLM startup. What’s the actual synergy here? The closest angle I can imagine is that AI workloads drive demand for more chips, but I believe ASML is already selling everything it can make.

AI is being used more and more in chip design

LLMs too? (outside of educating new engineers)

Re: Mistral raises 1.7B€, partners with ASML

#43
post #17
post #3

I truly do not see the USP for Mistral other than being based in EU. It's former USP of setting up their models on-premises for clients is now moot with the proliferation of open frontier models. I'd love to be proven wrong but I don't see a path forward for Mistral at this point, given how far they're behind and their overall lack of competitive advantages for an AI Lab like access to hardware, cheap energy or a mas…

While I tend to agree, the other players (Anthropic, OAI, Google) don't have super unique USPs compared to one another, either. Just to be fair.

I was about to post something similar. Sure, there are preferences and power users are aware which model does things better for their workflow, but for an average user, just giving them a chat box and any latest model from any of the providers would be adequate. They might notice a thing or two being different, but at the end of the day there is almost no sticking point once you take out chat history out of the equation.

Re: Mistral raises 1.7B€, partners with ASML

#45
post #30
post #2

With investments of these huge amounts (similar to Anthropic's recent investment), do they actually get a full 1.7B€ deposited into their bank account? Or does it work in some other way?

Anthropic has much more funding than that. Most recent one was at $13B at the one before was at $3.5B. Now imagine that GPT recieved $40B in one round!

GPT is not a company

Re: Mistral raises 1.7B€, partners with ASML

#46
post #37

Good news! ASML has a very strategic position. We are essentially all downstream of this one company. Personally I see this investment as much more political than technical. ASML wants to be a real 'European' champion; not just Dutch. The Dutch and German government are on board; now the French are too. See also: new CEO is French.

Not only are the CEO + COO French, they recently hired Le Maire, French ex-minister of Finance as a strategic advisor. ASML has also been rumoured to exit the Netherlands and relocate to France. It is definitely a political move.

I doubt the relocation: they just announced a new production site with 20.000 job openings in the next 3 years around Eindhoven.

I'm sure the French would love it, though. I always thought ASML would open a R&D facility in France or so to court the French government.

Guess this is it.

Re: Mistral raises 1.7B€, partners with ASML

#47
post #3

I truly do not see the USP for Mistral other than being based in EU. It's former USP of setting up their models on-premises for clients is now moot with the proliferation of open frontier models. I'd love to be proven wrong but I don't see a path forward for Mistral at this point, given how far they're behind and their overall lack of competitive advantages for an AI Lab like access to hardware, cheap energy or a mas…

They’ve built performance, enterprise utility, privacy, sovereignty, open innovation and strategic partnerships into their core story. It's quite a list. The models are opensource, Voxtral outperforms Whisper in terms of accuracy. There is no AI company like Mistral.

They built a fork of LLaMA, claimed tech as theirs; the punishment: receive 2B as funding

Re: Mistral raises 1.7B€, partners with ASML

#48
post #39
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure Europe doesn't want to cede AI development entirely to China.

Don't get me wrong, I do wish Mistral's models were competitive with the Chinese ones. But right now, they simply aren't, and might never be in the future. If you want the best option available while keeping your data within the EU, running a Chinese open weights model on hardware within the EU is likely the way to go.

Competitive how? Is coding the only use case people talk about the best model?

Re: Mistral raises 1.7B€, partners with ASML

#49
post #43
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I tend to agree, the other players (Anthropic, OAI, Google) don't have super unique USPs compared to one another, either. Just to be fair.

I was about to post something similar. Sure, there are preferences and power users are aware which model does things better for their workflow, but for an average user, just giving them a chat box and any latest model from any of the providers would be adequate. They might notice a thing or two being different, but at the end of the day there is almost no sticking point once you take out chat history out of the equat…

Claude Opus 4.1 is way above the others in terms of quality of the answers (especially for programming)

Re: Mistral raises 1.7B€, partners with ASML

#50
post #3

I truly do not see the USP for Mistral other than being based in EU. It's former USP of setting up their models on-premises for clients is now moot with the proliferation of open frontier models. I'd love to be proven wrong but I don't see a path forward for Mistral at this point, given how far they're behind and their overall lack of competitive advantages for an AI Lab like access to hardware, cheap energy or a mas…

They’ve built performance, enterprise utility, privacy, sovereignty, open innovation and strategic partnerships into their core story. It's quite a list. The models are opensource, Voxtral outperforms Whisper in terms of accuracy. There is no AI company like Mistral.

I mostly only agree with performance due to their collaboration with cerebras - this is a true differentiator.

I don't buy that they have an advantage in enterprise, privacy, sovereignty, open innovation and strategic partnership.

OpenAI also has opensource models and so do the chinese models.

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