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Mistral raises €3B

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Re: Mistral raises €3B

#271

Post by pimeys »

poisonborz wrote: post #268

For all that say Mistral is "at least something" for EU: where are the big EU-owned datacenters where we can run Chinese SOTA models safely, and labs that fork and quantize them on EU data? Wouldn't that be "more something"? Even if this method still depends on external resources short term, it's a money problem, and EU just loves pouring money on problems.

They try to build them, but for example in Finland where there's cheap electricity and lot of interest to build them, the people started protesting on rising electricity prices and now the politicians are noticing this.

Same in Denmark.

Re: Mistral raises €3B

#272

Post by gmueckl »

HenrikPontoppid wrote: post #92
Slartie wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, then Samsung Electronics appears to be dumb for leading this investment round? They probably only do it because they're European...oh, wait... > so if you don't have the most intelligent or cheapest model in the world, you're losing So how does this match up to the fact that there is currently OpenAI and Anthropic, both raking in money? They can't both have the smartest model at the same time, can they? And all…

The value of these companies is not defined entirely by the state of their current models. A much more important signal is their chance of having the best model in the future . Just like with anything having to do with investment, this is the castle in the sky. Also, shame on me for simplifying things so much - but I still believe in my original sentiment.

Replce "best" with "most fit for purpose" and you're right. The future won't be a one size fits all kind of deal because hardware availability constraints will eventually punish oversized models even more.

I think that there's a real second mover advantage in letting others waste money on researching ultra oversized models while creating smaller and cheaper models from their learnings.

Re: Mistral raises €3B

#273

Post by AureliusMA »

powerapple wrote: post #126
HenrikPontoppid wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It’s very possible that the people saying AGI is a winner takes all are indeed referring to warfare.

Re: Mistral raises €3B

#274

Post by eloisant »

user43928 wrote: post #229
eloisant wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is my conviction that in this space, if you're not the best in the world, you're losing I disagree on that point. Models are getting good enough that you can switch them and barely notice. I'm switching between Opus, GPT Codex and GLM 5.3 for coding and I can barely tell the difference. I think they'll become more like telcos than anything, selling a commodity. It's even truer when any provider can host open wei…

I can tell the difference between the SOTA and GLM 5.3, and paying a few hundred for the better models is definitely worth it. Mistral does not offer a model that makes sense to use. I understand they now host the already outdated GLM 5.2, courtesy of China providing the weights. And Mistral offers this for 2x-3x the price of other providers. This is supposed to be a success story?

I'm sure you can tell the difference.

But for the vast majority of usage GLM 5.3 or Deepseek V4 is enough.

Even people who do need frontier model will soon restrict it to the use cases that really need it and switch to cheaper models for the rest. It has already started.

Anthropic and OpenAI will never get enough customers paying top dollar to deliver on the revenue they need to offset their investments.

Re: Mistral raises €3B

#275

Post by TheJCDenton »

TheJCDenton wrote: post #135
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?

When Apple is not racing for the frontier it's a strategy, but when it's Mistral it's a mistake. The two companies have read the market the same. It's always very dangerous for first movers and their investors, and the commodification of intelligence seems even more likely each time a chinese open model release. It's less exciting to do business that way, but if you're building to stand the test of time, it's wiser t…

They are not the same kind of companies but they benefit both in their own way of the same market reading.

Apple is fine-tunning Gemini to customize Siri for their customers. They improve what's between the model and their customers : fine tune, inference up to the product. This is exactly what Mistral is doing, with an even more diversity of usage and needs because they are business oriented, instead of customer oriented. This is also what make them economically very efficient in comparison.

Beside Apple is still doing science experiments while Mistral is capable of releasing commercial models, albeit small and specialized.

Don't get me wrong, it's absolutely obvious that Apple is incredibly powerful, now more than ever. But the way they see the future, Mistral have a leaner trajectory.

Re: Mistral raises €3B

#276

Post by pimeys »

pkos98 wrote: post #244
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 :-/

In Germany AFAIK their Senior base salary ceiling is ~ 180k EUR - approx 210k USD for an Engineering role. Thats quite competitive for a base salary, as high as max ICT5 Staff base at Apple Munich.

And 180k in Germany, even in Berlin is pretty good. You are living a very good life with that salary.

Re: Mistral raises €3B

#277

Post by etiennebausson »

InsideOutSanta wrote: post #150
TheJCDenton wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Apple is not racing for the frontier it's a strategy, but when it's Mistral it's a mistake. The two companies have read the market the same. It's always very dangerous for first movers and their investors, and the commodification of intelligence seems even more likely each time a chinese open model release. It's less exciting to do business that way, but if you're building to stand the test of time, it's wiser t…

> When Apple is not racing for the frontier it's a strategy, but when it's Mistral it's a mistake. I think what Mistral is doing is smart within their financial constraints, but this comparison is misleading. Mistral is an LLM company; Apple is a consumer hardware and services company. It's smart for Apple not to join the LLM arms race, because they can just pick the cheapest supplier and let other companies take the…

Mistral is a Sovereign LLM Company, it's their main product and has been from nearly the start.

They don't actually need to offer the best models, they need credibility on the tech front and the security/strategic front, and institutional clients will keep coming.

Re: Mistral raises €3B

#278

Post by AureliusMA »

easytiger wrote: post #253
bambax wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m sort of surprised that the EU isn’t stepping in to support them. It is! The second largest investor in this round is Scaleup Europe Fund: https://eic.ec.europa.eu/eic-fund/scaleup-europe-fund_en

Do you think that's a good thing?

European money invested in a European company ought to be a good thing, don’t you think?

Re: Mistral raises €3B

#279

Post by AureliusMA »

tangled wrote: post #96

Europe absolutely needs a home-grown AI lab, especially with Pax Americana looking increasingly shaky. LLMs embody value systems, and American and European values are not the same (yes, there are overlaps, but also key differences). More nefariously, I can also imagine LLMs that silently degrade their reasoning when used in a national security context of a non-US country. So, Mistral may not be competitive with OpenA…

Europe has no budget of their own like the USA and China do, because there is no debt nor taxation at the European level. That’s the reason for the complication you are noticing.

Re: Mistral raises €3B

#280

Post by elAhmo »

TheJCDenton wrote: post #135
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?

When Apple is not racing for the frontier it's a strategy, but when it's Mistral it's a mistake. The two companies have read the market the same. It's always very dangerous for first movers and their investors, and the commodification of intelligence seems even more likely each time a chinese open model release. It's less exciting to do business that way, but if you're building to stand the test of time, it's wiser t…

Apple is a hardware company.
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