Mistral built a $14B AI empire by not being American

Post by pyrale » Mon, Apr 27, 2026, 3:22 PM UTC

guywithahat wrote: post #98

pyrale wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me rephrase this: companies want to avoid breaking the law unknowingly, because their US providers are going to break the law without notice, willingly or unwillingly. Plenty of corporations are willing to break the rules, but never for free.

> because their US providers are going to break the law without notice, willingly or unwillingly This is a weird hill to die on because it's not true. I can't find anything to support your world view and if anything evidence points to the contrary. Europe has a deliberately more complex legal framework, usually in the hopes of keeping out foreign competition (although it's dubious whether or not that actually works).

Post by psychoslave » Mon, Apr 27, 2026, 3:29 PM UTC

aurareturn wrote: post #5

In my opinion, being "Not American" or "Not Chinese" is not a good business model long-term. At some point, businesses will choose the option that provides the most value. I'm very skeptical that Mistral will survive long-term. Edit: I hear the commenters to this post. However, Mistral still relies on American chips. If there is truly a divorce between Europe and the US such that relying OpenAI or Anthropic is not an…

Post by philipallstar » Mon, Apr 27, 2026, 3:36 PM UTC

troyvit wrote: post #126

philipallstar wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For a lot of business customers, EU based hosting is not optional They still use US clouds that can have information pulled by the US government.

FTA: > So Mistral is developing its own data centers, starting with one outside Paris. Mensch projects it will have 200 megawatts of capacity by the end of 2027. Power from France’s state-owned nuclear plants will help, but the buildout could still cost an estimated $5 billion. Mensch tapped oil-rich Abu Dhabi and reportedly sought debt financing to help pay for it. Though to your point it won't be running until 2027…

Post by tmikaeld » Mon, Apr 27, 2026, 3:37 PM UTC

troyvit wrote: post #126

philipallstar wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For a lot of business customers, EU based hosting is not optional They still use US clouds that can have information pulled by the US government.

FTA: > So Mistral is developing its own data centers, starting with one outside Paris. Mensch projects it will have 200 megawatts of capacity by the end of 2027. Power from France’s state-owned nuclear plants will help, but the buildout could still cost an estimated $5 billion. Mensch tapped oil-rich Abu Dhabi and reportedly sought debt financing to help pay for it. Though to your point it won't be running until 2027…

Post by tmikaeld » Mon, Apr 27, 2026, 3:45 PM UTC

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #84

phillc73 wrote: post #3

I am a Mistral Le Chat Pro subscriber. I specifically chose to test their offerings because they are European. I don't have the necessary local hardware to run really big models, therefore need to choose a cloud provider if I want LLM action. I find the antics of Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Microsoft distasteful and avoid their products where I can. After testing Le Chat and Devstral-2 for a while, I felt their offeri…

Mistral models are definitely good enough. Most people fall for what I call the SOTA Logical Fallacy : whenever there is a 'better model', they think they need to use it, when less-powerful models actually perform the same tasks just as well. (it's an inverse form of the Shifting Baseline Syndrome : every time a new model comes out, people shift their baseline of what is acceptable, despite the fact that a previous b…