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

theregister.com

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

#51

Post by xprn »

wongarsu wrote: post #37
sanxiyn wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought EU had money a lot more than €15M (Microsoft investment), actually a lot more than €1.8B (Mistral valuation). Why didn't EU make an offer? If EU wants to own its AI future, it has enough money to buy one. They decided not to.

The EU generally doesn't act on the market like that. This isn't China or Soviet Russia after all, we are still operating under a form of capitalism. The EU does offer grants, but those are generally meant for projects that wouldn't get money on the free market

Is it just me that think that’s a huge catch-22? The project isn’t eligible for grants because it gets money on the free market, but is then limited by who it can come from or in what amount

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

#52

Post by mnau »

neverrroot wrote: post #21
mnau wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EU has to tech scene, so it doesn't want a potentially successful project to be transferred to US. What is the most biggest EU software company? SAP?

Top companies from Stoxx 50: LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton (422B Euro) ASML (347B) L'Oréal (241B) Hermès (240B) SAP (203B) Totalenergies (142B) Siemens (140B) For comparison, Spotify is only 50B.

These are top companies, not top software companies (even if we include Spotify).

So it's really SAP.

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

#53

Post by sanxiyn »

wongarsu wrote: post #37
sanxiyn wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought EU had money a lot more than €15M (Microsoft investment), actually a lot more than €1.8B (Mistral valuation). Why didn't EU make an offer? If EU wants to own its AI future, it has enough money to buy one. They decided not to.

The EU generally doesn't act on the market like that. This isn't China or Soviet Russia after all, we are still operating under a form of capitalism. The EU does offer grants, but those are generally meant for projects that wouldn't get money on the free market

Isn't Norway operating under a form of capitalism as well as owning controlling share of Statoil? Why mention China or Russia?

I guess Norway is not a member of EU.

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

#54

Post by wongarsu »

anonylizard wrote: post #33
Gare wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, lots of large European companies are privately held. For example: IKEA, Schwartz group (Kaufland, Lidl), Bosch, Aldi...

All 70 year old companies is not helping your point. US has new upstarts like Tesla and Nvidia, which at their prime, add like 1 IKEA per fortnight to their market cap.

I'm not sure if "the market doesn't know how to price Tesla and is rapidly fluctuating up and down" is really saying much.

In terms of revenue Bosch is comparable to Nvidia and Tesla. IKEA is about half that and Schwarz is about Nvidia and Tesla combined, but of course those two are bad comparisons because they are in the rather unexciting retail market.

But generally I agree that exciting upstarts that reach fortune 500 size tend to be US companies.

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

#55

Post by throwaway55671 »

Zambyte wrote: post #45
throwaway55671 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because sustaining is a job, and it's a very hard job. The shareholders might not like that job or want to do a different one, or they just can't do it. Or the market is going down, but someone could use the IP/assets/team.

> Because sustaining is a job, and it's a very hard job. ... and infinite growth is neither of those?

Who said infinite? Startup founders that got investments have designed the exit points based on market conditions, and nobody would trust "infinite". It's just like stock investments (unless you "invest" based on feelings, of course) - you calculate the risk, the potential, and then you decide. Nobody reasonable puts "infinite growth" into their Excel sheets.

And yes, growing until that exit point is a lot of work - so it makes total sense people want an exit at some point.

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

#56

Post by nerdponx »

anonylizard wrote: post #33
Gare wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, lots of large European companies are privately held. For example: IKEA, Schwartz group (Kaufland, Lidl), Bosch, Aldi...

All 70 year old companies is not helping your point. US has new upstarts like Tesla and Nvidia, which at their prime, add like 1 IKEA per fortnight to their market cap.

That's because literally the entire world is betting on their technology right now. I can't imagine that being located in the US is the cause for Nvidia being in the right place at the right time with CUDA.

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

#57

Post by nerdponx »

throwaway55671 wrote: post #55
Zambyte wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because sustaining is a job, and it's a very hard job. ... and infinite growth is neither of those?

Who said infinite? Startup founders that got investments have designed the exit points based on market conditions, and nobody would trust "infinite". It's just like stock investments (unless you "invest" based on feelings, of course) - you calculate the risk, the potential, and then you decide. Nobody reasonable puts "infinite growth" into their Excel sheets. And yes, growing until that exit point is a lot of work -…

The market expects infinite growth. Imagine what would happen if a publicly-traded company announced that they would stop pursuing growth.

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

#58

Post by throwaway55671 »

whiplash451 wrote: post #44
throwaway55671 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

385M USD is way too much for EU investors. They usually invest 10x-100x less. So the alternative without US investors would be to have no startup of this kind - great job, that will really help EU grow!

Let’s fix the root cause instead of leaning in to a subpar EU investment funnel. EU has billions to invest in AI. I don’t buy that EU has “much less money than the US”.

The EU doesn't invest, the EU provides subsidies with many strings attached. One of the strings usually is "can't be used to pay shareholders" (as in wages, not just dividends). Also, the subsidies are usually provided after the fact (e.g. a project is completed) and you need a loan to actually do the project. That's a risk, and banks don't like providing loans to small companies without predictable cashflow; they would do it only if a shareholder with enough assets personally underwrites it - another huge risk, now a startup can destroy your whole life.

If you meant the investors of EU - please show me where you got the data, because the official EU data suggest otherwise. People simply aren't that rich around here, which is a downstream effect of the much slower, smaller economy.

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

#59

Post by ojl »

anonylizard wrote: post #33
Gare wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, lots of large European companies are privately held. For example: IKEA, Schwartz group (Kaufland, Lidl), Bosch, Aldi...

All 70 year old companies is not helping your point. US has new upstarts like Tesla and Nvidia, which at their prime, add like 1 IKEA per fortnight to their market cap.

Nvidia was founded 30 years ago so not exactly new either.

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

#60

Post by wongarsu »

sanxiyn wrote: post #53
wongarsu wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU generally doesn't act on the market like that. This isn't China or Soviet Russia after all, we are still operating under a form of capitalism. The EU does offer grants, but those are generally meant for projects that wouldn't get money on the free market

Isn't Norway operating under a form of capitalism as well as owning controlling share of Statoil? Why mention China or Russia? I guess Norway is not a member of EU.

There is also the German state of Lower Saxony holding 12% of Volkswagen, and of course lots of countries fully or partially owning technically private organizations in infrastructure, transportation and communication. So "generally" is doing some lifting here. It's not that this never happens, but it is the exception. It would be highly unusual for the EU to just directly invest in companies like that.
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