Europe probes Microsoft's €15M stake in AI upstart Mistral • Hacker News Board

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

#131

Post by spidersenses » Wed, Feb 28, 2024, 8:25 PM UTC

DANmode wrote: post #112

spidersenses wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Statements like these are only a momentary snapshot. As soon as sufficiently money is at stake the board might change their tune overnight. The whole Altman-fired-from-OpenAI-then-reinstated drama should be warning enough.

What do you think they got Sam to bend the knee on, out of curiosity?

In my opinion, Altman's permanent departure would have been the death of OpenAI. After the majority of the staff threatened their resignation from OpenAI, Altman became the one holding all the leverage. I'd rather guess that OpenAI's board made him a once-in-a-lifetime offer to persuade him to come back.

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

#132

Post by ljm » Wed, Feb 28, 2024, 9:00 PM UTC

zeroCalories wrote: post #123

fvdessen wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regulations are not a problem, it's the lack of a big common market. Expanding from let's say Belgium to Germany is almost as difficult as expanding to the USA. That's why the two countries that have a big tech scenes (US/China) are the ones that have big unified markets.

Regulation is what makes that hard.

Not really. Regulation serves the interest of the consumer, rather than the kind of deregulation that serves the interest of the shareholder.

In the US you build your app and everything is in English. You can launch that across all of the states as-is.

In Europe (not even the EU specifically) you’re gonna need i18n, particularly with B2B. If you want to launch in Germany, for example, you’ll be expected to provide an interface in German. You can’t presume everyone speaks English, because they don’t. Expect multilingual support too.

Then you have payment. Different countries have different cultural norms, so what people are used to using in the Netherlands is unlikely to be supported generically elsewhere. It’s not gonna be enough to just support Stripe and card payments or PayPal for B2C.

Regulation doesn’t mandate any of this. It’s effectively conducting business internationally.

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

#133

Post by pelorat » Thu, Feb 29, 2024, 7:44 AM UTC

mrkramer wrote: post #66

Microsoft only invested $16M....lol.....I thought Mistral would demand more but I guess partnership with Microsoft is more valuable than cash.

To be honest. $16M is a huge amount of money for most companies based in Europe.

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

#134

Post by dacryn » Thu, Feb 29, 2024, 11:34 AM UTC

odood wrote: post #20

15 million in Mistral vs 13 billion in OpenAI. There must be a different reason at play here.

if you can handicap a competitor for 15 million to save your 13 billion investment, go for it

There is a reason EU is investigating this, and this is exactly it. They are sick of the Microsoft extinguish aspect

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

#135

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Feb 29, 2024, 7:49 PM UTC

UncleEntity wrote: post #128

nerdponx wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem here is that, if you can see the adverse effects on the public, you're too late. So you need to anticipate them. That's not an easy thing to do.

So, pre-crime? It's not illegal to be a monopoly[0] (at least in the US) but abusing your monopoly is what gets you in trouble. Copyright and patents are examples of gov't granted monopolies. [0] Fully conceding the fact that MS is a convicted monopolist and has to play by different rules than everyone else.

[deleted]