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Mistral raises 1.7B€, partners with ASML

mistral.ai

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Re: Mistral raises 1.7B€, partners with ASML

#301

Post by 0xfaded »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #273
0xfaded wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience in Europe is that investors look for teams of three: a CEO, a CTO, and one more person whose full-time job for the first two years will be filling out funding applications. That's a 50% overhead from day one.

Is that really different from the US, where instead of (or in addition to) doing funding applications it's schmoozing with potential investors? Hacker News over the years has had tons of posts about getting investors interested, or "growth hacking" to make the numbers look better for said investors, and of course then there's going public which is the ultimate "looking for investors". But I suppose the main differenc…

One difference is that the investors expect their money to be matched by some grant, so you have to do the work twice. The grants take into consideration investments, so it's basically part of the system.

Re: Mistral raises 1.7B€, partners with ASML

#302

Post by dmix »

mlinsey wrote: post #284
maeln wrote: post #230

ASML gross revenue was 28B€ in 2024, and their net income was 7.5B€. While 1.3B€ (the amount ASML invested in this 1.7B€ fund raise) is not pocket change, it is also an amount that ASML can not afford to lose. While they might have seen some synergy with Mistral, it might also be a complete strategic and/or political investment. Mistral is the only serious "AI" company in the EU right now (if you exclude company work…

I dunno if ASML is lacking any political favor that Mistral can give them, they are already one of the most critical companies for Europe and the entire western supply chain. There is a possibility this is a step towards building a full-stack all-EU AI - if AI delivers on the hype, the EU will certainly want to have one they fully control without dependency on either the US or China. But this would mean having an EU-…

Businesses are always looking ahead long term. All technical advantages fade over time.

Re: Mistral raises 1.7B€, partners with ASML

#303

Post by mattlutze »

maeln wrote: post #230

ASML gross revenue was 28B€ in 2024, and their net income was 7.5B€. While 1.3B€ (the amount ASML invested in this 1.7B€ fund raise) is not pocket change, it is also an amount that ASML can not afford to lose. While they might have seen some synergy with Mistral, it might also be a complete strategic and/or political investment. Mistral is the only serious "AI" company in the EU right now (if you exclude company work…

> Mistral is the only serious "AI" company in the EU right now (if you exclude company working on the hardware side).

While Mistral is the one directly in the front of the Frontier LLM race at the moment, I would encourage you to also look at DeepL and Proton. They both actually have a sophisticated and significant setups for model research and deployment.

Re: Mistral raises 1.7B€, partners with ASML

#304

Post by Arubis »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #266
louis_saglio wrote: post #256

LLM companies are Nvidia wrappers, who is a TSMC wrapper, who is an ASML wrapper. So Mistral is just an ASML wrapper.

ASML in turn wraps a bunch of companies for lenses (Carl Zeiss), lasers (Trumpf), etc [0] Given lenses and microchips are both made from sand, I'm gonna conspiracy theory that LLMs were invented by sand companies to sell more sand. [0] https://www.robotsops.com/complete-list-of-all-suppliers-and...

If we’re gonna go all the way down this road, I’ve seen the global economy described as “extracting carbon from the earth and putting it into the atmosphere as fast as possible”.

Re: Mistral raises 1.7B€, partners with ASML

#305

Post by bitpush »

mattlutze wrote: post #303
maeln wrote: post #230

ASML gross revenue was 28B€ in 2024, and their net income was 7.5B€. While 1.3B€ (the amount ASML invested in this 1.7B€ fund raise) is not pocket change, it is also an amount that ASML can not afford to lose. While they might have seen some synergy with Mistral, it might also be a complete strategic and/or political investment. Mistral is the only serious "AI" company in the EU right now (if you exclude company work…

> Mistral is the only serious "AI" company in the EU right now (if you exclude company working on the hardware side). While Mistral is the one directly in the front of the Frontier LLM race at the moment, I would encourage you to also look at DeepL and Proton. They both actually have a sophisticated and significant setups for model research and deployment.

Proton as in the privacy mail company?

Re: Mistral raises 1.7B€, partners with ASML

#306

Post by mattlutze »

benjiro wrote: post #241
tedggh wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Its not a "Europe" issue alone but even more locally. Saying this as a IT guy, we had way too many talks with banks about IT projects that in the US will have been way easier. But in specific EU countries was constantly met with "amazon does that, why bother" type of comments. Even on governmental level, talking about "innovative investments", it was like talking to walls. As you expect, a lot of companies (and peopl…

It's very simple to found a company in the US that has access to the entire 50 states and all of the investors therein, with a single/simple accounting to manage. And you don't have to live in the US to do it.

Europe/EU/EEA don't have a comparable setup. Found in one country, deal with workers in many, filings in all of the countries you're doing business, and more.

The new proposed EU Incorporation would go a long way to lowering the bar for getting started and accessing pools of funds between investors in different countries.

Re: Mistral raises 1.7B€, partners with ASML

#307

Post by dharma1 »

yvoschaap wrote: post #101
robertlagrant wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what it would cost Apple to recreate ASML.

Ask China, they've been trying for a decade.

Give them enough time and they will. EUV will hit limits anyway in a decade.

For china it's DUV+packaging for now, NIL/DSA mid-term, and MoS₂/2D chips long term. But wafer scale, defect free 2D logic is 20–30 yrs out, so no EUV shortcut anytime soon

Re: Mistral raises 1.7B€, partners with ASML

#309

Post by johncolanduoni »

mattlutze wrote: post #306
benjiro wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not a "Europe" issue alone but even more locally. Saying this as a IT guy, we had way too many talks with banks about IT projects that in the US will have been way easier. But in specific EU countries was constantly met with "amazon does that, why bother" type of comments. Even on governmental level, talking about "innovative investments", it was like talking to walls. As you expect, a lot of companies (and peopl…

It's very simple to found a company in the US that has access to the entire 50 states and all of the investors therein, with a single/simple accounting to manage. And you don't have to live in the US to do it. Europe/EU/EEA don't have a comparable setup. Found in one country, deal with workers in many, filings in all of the countries you're doing business, and more. The new proposed EU Incorporation would go a long w…

I don’t know how the difficulty compares to the EU, but US states require a bunch of per-state filings if you’re hiring employees that live there, in addition to the different tax regimes.

Re: Mistral raises 1.7B€, partners with ASML

#310

Post by bondarchuk »

maeln wrote: post #230

ASML gross revenue was 28B€ in 2024, and their net income was 7.5B€. While 1.3B€ (the amount ASML invested in this 1.7B€ fund raise) is not pocket change, it is also an amount that ASML can not afford to lose. While they might have seen some synergy with Mistral, it might also be a complete strategic and/or political investment. Mistral is the only serious "AI" company in the EU right now (if you exclude company work…

"it is also an amount that ASML can not afford to lose"

Did you mean to say "it is not an amount that asml cannot afford to lose" or "it is an amount that asml can afford to lose"?

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