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European AI. A playbook to own it

europe.mistral.ai

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Re: European AI. A playbook to own it

#131

Post by tim333 »

blitzar wrote: post #123
tjwebbnorfolk wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just startups or funding. Google alone has more AI compute than China and the EU combined. There's no shortage of capital in Europe. But nobody wants to take the risk. Meanwhile in the US, people are putting 10-100x the capital at risk. So you can say what you want about it looking scary to you to invest in the US, but the people with capital to invest clearly don't see it that way. More often when you hear VCs g…

> never-ending EU regulations Does anyone ever say what these regulations are? Or are they like "red tape" / "regulations on bendy bananas" / "WMDs" / "the war on christmas"?

My dad was a farmer under EU regulation and there was a stack of paper about 1 ft think to grow some barley. I don't know how that relates to AI. Another thing in Italy it's near impossible to fire people which makes people very reluctant to set up some business where cashflow for employment varies much.

I live in the UK where we seem quite good at inventing things but not that good at global profit making with a result that companies like DeepMind and ARM get bought by foreign investors.

Re: European AI. A playbook to own it

#132

Post by yobbo »

zmmmmm wrote: post #59
enejej wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The funding allocation is a reflection of different cultures really. I’m from the UK but there’s no way there’s the same density, drive, and hunger to take risk, to the extent that you find in US. Also there’s a lot more synergy in the US vs a fragmented Europe.

Yet the UK did produce Deepmind. Which you can look at both ways since it got gobbled up by Google. But it at least came from the UK. I assume the article excludes the UK, I feel like UK has much more of a startup and VC scene than Europe does and I wonder if that is part of the issue : if you do want to create a startup, the London is a better place than mainland Europe. So even startups that for whatever reason won…

Deepmind was not a viable business at the time Google acquired it. Today, it is probably even less viable. It functions as R&D-lab for Google which has its own products and datacenters.

Re: European AI. A playbook to own it

#133

Post by WarmWash »

loky4i4 wrote: post #127
WarmWash wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Good on Europeans for rejecting this American blight. Reject it? They pay hundreds of billions for it. Every year. For decades now. Europe runs on American tech, using American and Chinese hardware, powered by American energy, and protected by American defense. Surely you're confused here, because Europe didn't reject these things, they offshored them and then teased Americans about working so hard. Europe's economi…

and european investors invest more money in usa than eu

Given the US has a money making culture that is very business friendly, it completely makes sense. The "American Blight" could roughly be translated as "Investor Returns".

Re: European AI. A playbook to own it

#134

Post by deaux »

dcrazy wrote: post #95
r-w wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Who do you know who isn't working in tech and finds something to celebrate in entrepreneurship?

I am thoroughly perplexed by this statement. Every single person who starts their own restaurant, painting company, events planning company, etc. is an entrepreneur. The appeal of saving up enough to break free of your job and start working for yourself is so pervasive as to be almost entirely unspoken. It’s something that, being raised as an American, you simply believe is good in the same way you believe that steal…

> Every single person who starts their own restaurant, painting company, events planning company, etc. is an entrepreneur.

These are completely irrelevant to this thread, so I'm perplexed that you're perplexed. Read the thread, see that it's about differences between the US and the EU, and then realize what is meant by entrepeneur _in context_. Europe isn't very different from the US when it comes to plumbing company owners.

Re: European AI. A playbook to own it

#135

Post by deaux »

blitzar wrote: post #123
tjwebbnorfolk wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just startups or funding. Google alone has more AI compute than China and the EU combined. There's no shortage of capital in Europe. But nobody wants to take the risk. Meanwhile in the US, people are putting 10-100x the capital at risk. So you can say what you want about it looking scary to you to invest in the US, but the people with capital to invest clearly don't see it that way. More often when you hear VCs g…

> never-ending EU regulations Does anyone ever say what these regulations are? Or are they like "red tape" / "regulations on bendy bananas" / "WMDs" / "the war on christmas"?

They are exactly like the things you named. If you talk to a bunch of EU founders (not just a single loud one on X) you'll find regulations are low down on the priority list of things that make it harder in the EU.

Re: European AI. A playbook to own it

#136

Post by deaux »

tim333 wrote: post #131
blitzar wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> never-ending EU regulations Does anyone ever say what these regulations are? Or are they like "red tape" / "regulations on bendy bananas" / "WMDs" / "the war on christmas"?

My dad was a farmer under EU regulation and there was a stack of paper about 1 ft think to grow some barley. I don't know how that relates to AI. Another thing in Italy it's near impossible to fire people which makes people very reluctant to set up some business where cashflow for employment varies much. I live in the UK where we seem quite good at inventing things but not that good at global profit making with a res…

> Another thing in Italy it's near impossible to fire people

It's just as impossible to fire people in Japan and Korea yet I'm quite sure they're doing quite a lot better at the startup per capita ratio when compared to population under 40.

Italy is also infamous in the EU for its bureaucracy, together with Germany. Look at how half of Italy's football stadiums are falling apart to a degree not seen in neighboring Spain or France.

Farming is unrelated to tech. I believe your dad.

Re: European AI. A playbook to own it

#137

Post by deaux »

kitbrennan wrote: post #72
enejej wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The funding allocation is a reflection of different cultures really. I’m from the UK but there’s no way there’s the same density, drive, and hunger to take risk, to the extent that you find in US. Also there’s a lot more synergy in the US vs a fragmented Europe.

I’m also from the UK and I think this is a self-fulfilling prophecy. As a UK founder that has raised in the UK, I have seen our US competitors raise substantially more with substantially less traction, so in future I’m significantly more tempted to look across the pond for raising. It has little to do with my culture vs theirs, and all to do with where the opportunity sits. Many of the other founders I know with the…

This seems pretty limited to tech. For example in domains like media and marketing - I mean startups in these fields, not "marketing team of a tech startup" which is tech - the amount of "drive" feels the same whether the US or the EU.

So it's purely tech. And there, that extra "drive" that leads to the US and modern VC culture seems to largely be based on a hunger for power and immense wealth, when it comes down to it. I know everyone pretends it doesn't, changing the world for the positive, blah blah. But when push comes to shove, that's the outcomes we're seeing.

Re: European AI. A playbook to own it

#138

Post by deaux »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #67
enejej wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The funding allocation is a reflection of different cultures really. I’m from the UK but there’s no way there’s the same density, drive, and hunger to take risk, to the extent that you find in US. Also there’s a lot more synergy in the US vs a fragmented Europe.

There are places with the same entrepreneurial drive that are part of the EU. But look at an LP-facing deck for a VC fund in Europe, and I can't recall ever seeing an investment with a little flag of Poland. My belief is the underlying dynamics are less about, generalizing about cultures. Like you're right that that's what US VCs say, and collective belief is truth in markets even if it is not truth in reality. The b…

> There are places with the same entrepreneurial drive that are part of the EU.

Name them rather than being vague, clearly people here want to hear where they are.

Re: European AI. A playbook to own it

#139

Post by deaux »

taurath wrote: post #48
sva_ wrote: post #29

There's this sentiment in Germany that if you can't make in industry, you work for the government or - even worse - become a politician. It seems like Mistral took that to the next level; they can't compete so they do lobbying instead. Being European, I love the idea of European AI labs. But I wish there was more competition. That being said, as a German for example, I can't think of an AI company successfully traini…

Nobody can compete with trillions of dollars of capital if it’s a race for capital.

Z.ai, Moonshot, Deepseek - which of these spent trillions? Their best models are much stronger than Mistral's, the first two have models that are competitive with the US frontier ones.

Not hating on Mistral here, their latest Mistral Small 4 is quite capable and a very reasonable choice for its cost and size.

Re: European AI. A playbook to own it

#140

Post by deaux »

dwedge wrote: post #9

I've tried Mistral a few times, at first it seemed promising (though lagging) but at some point it seems like they stopped focusing on AI and shifted their focus to being a mouthpiece for EU policy and pushing for regulation. I can't really take any of their announcements seriously anymore. A couple of weeks ago they were calling for a European AI tax to pay creatives.

I respectfully disagree. Until very recently they never had a model that came close to Pareto competitiveness at their price points. Recently theh released Mistral Small 4 and for the first time it's competitive.
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