Mistral raises 1.7B€, partners with ASML • Hacker News Board

Re: Mistral raises 1.7B€, partners with ASML

#341

Post by bigyabai » Tue, Sep 09, 2025, 4:17 PM UTC

alcinos wrote: post #250

lordofgibbons wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but we have reached the limit of AI scaling with conventional methods We've just only started RL training LLMs. So far, RL has not used more than 10-20% of the existing pre-training compute budget. There's a lot of scaling left in RL training yet.

> We've just only started RL training LLMs That's just factually wrong. Even the original chatGPT model (based on gpt3.5, released in 2022) was trained with RL (specifically RLHF).

The original ChatGPT was like 3 years after the first usable transformer models.

Re: Mistral raises 1.7B€, partners with ASML

#342

Post by orbifold » Tue, Sep 09, 2025, 4:25 PM UTC

jacekm wrote: post #337

maeln wrote: post #230

ASML gross revenue was 28B€ in 2024, and their net income was 7.5B€. While 1.3B€ (the amount ASML invested in this 1.7B€ fund raise) is not pocket change, it is also an amount that ASML can not afford to lose. While they might have seen some synergy with Mistral, it might also be a complete strategic and/or political investment. Mistral is the only serious "AI" company in the EU right now (if you exclude company work…

I just want to remind our overseas friends that the EU is not a country and Mistral is French company. The EU rarely bets on a single firm in a single country, there are always 26 unhappy countries when something like that is about to happen ;) I am European and I do agree that we should support the European companies but such decision are always results of lengthy deliberations. Does anyone know if there is any comp…

Airbus

Re: Mistral raises 1.7B€, partners with ASML

#343

Post by akkad33 » Tue, Sep 09, 2025, 4:28 PM UTC

laurent_du wrote: post #218

rdm_blackhole wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they recently hired Le Maire, French ex-minister of Finance as a strategic advisor. Then I can say without much speculation that this will end in a disaster. Hiring Le Maire as a strategic advisor with his "accomplishments" should be taken as a sign of clear enshitiffication.

He won't be giving any advice, they are buying his contact list.

Still smells like corruption

Re: Mistral raises 1.7B€, partners with ASML

#344

Post by kaechle » Tue, Sep 09, 2025, 4:33 PM UTC

bondarchuk wrote: post #318

yieldcrv wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the former would create a double negative the latter changes the meaning it’s correct the first way, ASML would be harmed by losing that money “cannot afford to lose”

"While 1.3B€ is not pocket change, it is also an amount that ASML can not afford to lose." - The sentence is framed like a contrast but then instead it says the same thing twice.

I’ll see your pedantry and raise you ... more pedantry. The sentence may be a bit clunky, but there’s nothing grammatically wrong with it. And you’re leaving out the first sentence, which frames the comparison:

> ASML gross revenue was 28B€ in 2024, and their net income was 7.5B€. While 1.3B€ (the amount ASML invested in this 1.7B€ fund raise) is not pocket change, it is also an amount that ASML can not afford to lose.

Worded another way:

> ASML had a healthy margin of 7.5B€ on 28B€ in gross revenue in 2024. 1.3B€ isn’t a huge chunk of this, relatively speaking, but *it’s also an amount that ASML can’t afford to lose.*

Still clunky. Still not wrong.

Re: Mistral raises 1.7B€, partners with ASML

#345

Post by FirmwareBurner » Tue, Sep 09, 2025, 4:38 PM UTC

pegasus wrote: post #180

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tarifs on AI software? Who? When? Where? I'm talking about the present not making up streamen since that goes nowhere as anyone can make up anything.

There's been a lot of talk on European tariffs on US software services. We are in the middle of a tariff war, in case you didn't notice. Hardly a strawman...

>There's been a lot of talk on European tariffs on US software services.

If political talks were cookies I would have died of diabetes 500 times by now. Show me actions, not political posturing and virtue signaling to gain applause from the unwashed masses. Because the EU has been talking about digital sovereignty for 10+++ years now and nothing close to what the US has came out of it. Only more talks and more bureaucracy.

But let's say they will actually do it, how are they gonna tariff US tech when it's being sold from Europe by EU companies? When my EU state buys AWS and Office 365, they don't buy from Amazon and Microsoft Seattle so you can tariff them, they buy from Microsoft Dublin and Amazon Luxembourg, both EU companies.

That's why EU's tariffs on US tech are actually the fines they issue regularly on big tech companies. You make laws with a barrier so impossibly high (like having to eliminate "hate speech" in maximum 10 minutes since it was posted) that only your local companies can clear because they're small or absent in things like social media, and then the fines start rolling like off a money printer.

Re: Mistral raises 1.7B€, partners with ASML

#346

Post by bornfreddy » Tue, Sep 09, 2025, 4:51 PM UTC

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #328

bitpush wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Proton as in the privacy mail company?

And the privacy chatbot “where every conversation is confidential” https://proton.me/blog/lumo-ai

So, the one in Switzerland, which is not in EU?

Re: Mistral raises 1.7B€, partners with ASML

#347

Post by sabas123 » Tue, Sep 09, 2025, 4:53 PM UTC

orbifold wrote: post #342

jacekm wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just want to remind our overseas friends that the EU is not a country and Mistral is French company. The EU rarely bets on a single firm in a single country, there are always 26 unhappy countries when something like that is about to happen ;) I am European and I do agree that we should support the European companies but such decision are always results of lengthy deliberations. Does anyone know if there is any comp…

Airbus

Exception

Re: Mistral raises 1.7B€, partners with ASML

#348

Post by qrios » Tue, Sep 09, 2025, 4:58 PM UTC

namero999 wrote: post #226

admiralrohan wrote: post #65

Everyone is so negative here but we have reached the limit of AI scaling with conventional methods. Who knows Mistral might find the next big breakthrough like DeepSeek did. We should be optimistic.

Especially with Euclyd entering the space (efficiency for AI workloads), with founders with tight ties to ASML, this is the move Europe needs.

Thnx for the hint! I missed the news[1].

[1] https://euclyd.ai/#news

Re: Mistral raises 1.7B€, partners with ASML

#349

Post by tensor » Tue, Sep 09, 2025, 4:59 PM UTC

greyb wrote: 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…

Every. Single. Time. a Mistral story hits the front page, a variation of this exact comment is posted. And every single time it is corrected. It almost feels like intentional misinformation.

To repeat for the millionth time unique offerings for Mistral:

- some of the best edge models.

- some of the most cost effective in terms of cost per performance medium size models.

- unique small language models.

- unique OCR offering.

And also, being based in the EU is a HUGE advantage for any non-US company. The only thing predictable about doing business is that it's not predictable. At any moment you could get a shakedown, or just be cut off from US technology. It's a huge business risk.

Re: Mistral raises 1.7B€, partners with ASML

#350

Post by aDyslecticCrow » Tue, Sep 09, 2025, 4:59 PM UTC

sroussey wrote: post #324

aDyslecticCrow wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite complex algorithms are used to compensate and tune for pattern clarity and focus in high end semiconductor production. Its a field that has used neutral networks before. (As people pushed down the size pre-EUV, apparently alot of wierd techniques were layered to produce features at or smaller than the wavelength) But mistral just makes llms. There is no reason to believe experts in llm would be at all competent…

Multi patterning to get effective smaller wavelengths has been around a while. It’s cheaper to reuse machines you already own, but slows down production. OpenAI does more than LLMs, they have bio ML research etc. and Google has AlphaFold. It would not surprise me if Mistral had an ML team on physics related to work that ASML could use.

I suppose, but i don't feel like that makes mistral special enough to excuse this amount of funding. They would need clever researchers with resources to do research. The kind of AI we're talking about would likely not benefit from data-center scale training either. So why the 1.7B euro? That amount of money could fund multiple small dedicated research labs for exactly the domain ASML is interested in.

I don't think it adds up if this is truly for multi-patterning or pattern exposure correction technology.

As others mention it could be for entering and grabbing some value from down-stream technologies (actual investment expecting return of some sort) but it's odd how they skip over like 200 steps between their industry and the industry they invest in. Its like iron ore mine investing in precision screws. Its down the value added chain but such a massive leap that it makes me scratch my head.