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Mistral raises €3B

mistral.ai

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Re: Mistral raises €3B

#121

Post by dwedge »

pavlov wrote: post #113
dwedge wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are regulationmaxxing instead of benchmaxxing, that's my problem with them.

After living in the US for several years, I was happy to return to the EU where regulations exist to protect against the worst corporate behavior. My American bank sold my credit card transactions to advertisers. My American mobile operator had insane fees for roaming and other features that are basic in Europe. Sending a bank transfer in America was unreliable and slow and expensive because there was nothing like SE…

Sure but it's not the government calling for regulation, it's Mistral. At times they seem like a government mouthpiece to check the waters, which I could accept if their models were at least any good

Re: Mistral raises €3B

#122

Post by gman83 »

matusp wrote: post #59
davedx wrote: post #45

Mistral is an interesting AI company because they clearly have a contrarian business strategy to the other AI labs. They're also landing big customers in Europe for the right reasons. People dump on them because they're not benchmaxxxing which is pretty shortsighted - do you really want to be in a benchmark arms race with China, or do you want to make money and deploy sovereign AI compute in Europe?

This is a bottom feeder mentality. Europe has enough bright people and resources to truly compete in the AI race. There is something wrong when the only selling point is that it's local.

No, Europe doesn't have the capital markets required to build the required data centers. Underwriting gigawatt data centers and frontier models demands a fully realized European Capital Markets Union, a single energy regulator with cross-border grid integration, and shared fiscal borrowing power.

Re: Mistral raises €3B

#123

Post by vrganj »

prolly97 wrote: post #99
intended wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It bears repeating - all markets get regulated. Markets, left to their own devices, do not end up automatically being competitive in favor of consumers. But above all, if AI wasn’t hyped as a threat to humanity, to jobs, to security, regulation could have been cautious. To add insult to injury, given how voters are tired of technology, expecting a different move from governments is a losing bet.

There's a big difference between governments regulating to benefit their own control and power, and regulating in favor of consumers. Most regulation in the EU have jack-all to do with consumers. There's a couple of niceties - having all prices displayed in comparable unites (EUR/kg, EUR/liter etc). But apart from that the regulation have broadly served as moats around the largest businesses.

That's not even true in the concrete case we're talking about here.

As part of the AI Act, an important decision on a person (such as a hiring decision) cannot be made without human involvement.

You think that's not in favor of "consumers"? (also note the implicitly submissive framing of humans as receptacles for consumption instead of subjects with rights!)

Re: Mistral raises €3B

#124

Post by mondrian »

HenrikPontoppid wrote: post #47
donmb wrote: post #35

Mistral is not that bad as the comments here suggest. I am not using it as a frontier model but with simple RAG tasks and its doing great. Also OCR is pretty decent. It's a positive development that Europe is at least trying. Alternative would be: do nothing.

When it comes to what really matters, they're far behind and probably will not catch up. It is my conviction that in this space, if you're not the best in the world, you're losing. Everyone is fundamentally selling the same thing, so if you don't have the most intelligent or cheapest model in the world, you're losing. Sure, Mistral has a "Made in Europe" edge, but any open-weight self-hosted chinese model might as we…

Europe is a different beast. They build and distribute rails, they don’t compete on frontier capabilities. When the civic benefits of AI become clear, EU is in a position to mandate their distribution. US develops capabilities that remain stuck in heterogeneous corporate silos without interop. Payments is a good point of comparisons between the two approaches.

Re: Mistral raises €3B

#125

Post by andsoitis »

bayarearefugee wrote: post #71
speedgoose wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m no expert in religion, but wouldn’t Jesus speech be more on the Greta side if he came back to earth today? By like a very very wide margin?

Well, sure, but on the other hand Peter Thiel thinks she might be the antichrist, and he has an awful lot of money which means he is an expert on everything.

He says she’s the Antichrist because she’s against progress and threatens the continued thriving of our civilization. Being antichrist is an archetype.

Re: Mistral raises €3B

#126

Post by powerapple »

HenrikPontoppid wrote: post #47
donmb wrote: post #35

Mistral is not that bad as the comments here suggest. I am not using it as a frontier model but with simple RAG tasks and its doing great. Also OCR is pretty decent. It's a positive development that Europe is at least trying. Alternative would be: do nothing.

When it comes to what really matters, they're far behind and probably will not catch up. It is my conviction that in this space, if you're not the best in the world, you're losing. Everyone is fundamentally selling the same thing, so if you don't have the most intelligent or cheapest model in the world, you're losing. Sure, Mistral has a "Made in Europe" edge, but any open-weight self-hosted chinese model might as we…

I don't get it when people all claim that AGI is a winner takes all game. It is not (unless it is used as a weapon). When one company reaches AGI, there will be a dozen very close to AGI, given time. Also a winner is not going to drive everyone else out of business, it is the opposite, one winner will have people betting on the second and the third winners, the technology will also help other develops. Once you have a good enough model, everything will be incremental. I think the hardware capability will be the real burden, not the model itself. If AGI is as powerful as it sounds, maybe hardware won't be a problem any more.

Re: Mistral raises €3B

#127

Post by eloisant »

kome wrote: post #86
tasoeur wrote: post #81

Last I saw job offers for mistral (engineering, Paris) it advertised 90k euros base salary. Not sure how they’re intending to compete with the US when even a top AI lab can’t afford to be competitive :-/

some people would rather live in paris than los angels or san francisco (and rightly so, if you ask me)...

US software companies (Google, Meta, MS, etc) have offices in Paris and they pay way more than that. Especially if you take into account total comp (Mistral is private so any stocks you get are "locked" until IPO or sell out)

Yes 90k is more than most French software companies pay, but the salary needs to be competitive with those US companies.

Re: Mistral raises €3B

#128

Post by tonyhart7 »

davedx wrote: post #45

Mistral is an interesting AI company because they clearly have a contrarian business strategy to the other AI labs. They're also landing big customers in Europe for the right reasons. People dump on them because they're not benchmaxxxing which is pretty shortsighted - do you really want to be in a benchmark arms race with China, or do you want to make money and deploy sovereign AI compute in Europe?

are you saying current frontier AI labs is benchmaxxxing and not because the AI model is good ?????

You crazy to think that Fable and Astra capabilities is fake

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