Mistral AI

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Mistral AI SAS
Mistral AI Logo
Type Private
Industry Artificial intelligence
Founded April 28, 2023
Founders Arthur Mensch (CEO)
Guillaume Lample (Chief Scientist)
Timothée Lacroix (CTO)
Headquarters Paris, France
Key people Arthur Mensch (CEO)
Guillaume Lample (Chief Scientist)
Timothée Lacroix (CTO)


Products LLMs (open-weight and proprietary)
Le Chat (assistant)
La Plateforme (API platform)
Mistral models
Mixtral models
Codestral
Pixtral



Valuation €11.7 billion (Series C, Sept. 2025)
Employees 350 (Sept. 2025)
Website mistral.ai

Mistral AI is a French artificial intelligence company headquartered in Paris, France. Founded in April 2023 by former researchers from Google DeepMind and Meta Platforms, Arthur Mensch, Guillaume Lample, and Timothée Lacroix, the company develops large language models (LLMs) and related tooling. The three co-founders originally met during their studies at École Polytechnique.[1] Mistral publishes both open-source/open-weight models (for example Mistral 7B, Mixtral 8x7B) and proprietary offerings delivered via API (for example Mistral Large, Mistral Medium 3, Magistral Medium).[1] In September 2025, it announced a €1.7 billion Series C led by ASML at an €11.7 billion post-money valuation, and reported a workforce of roughly 350 people across multiple offices.[2][3]

History

Mistral AI was incorporated on April 28, 2023, by Mensch, Lample, and Lacroix, alumni of École Polytechnique and veterans of Google DeepMind and Meta AI. Mensch spent nearly three years at Google DeepMind, while Lample and Lacroix are large-scale AI model specialists who had previously worked for Meta, with Lample being one of the creators of Meta's LLaMA language model.[1] The founders aimed to build AI models that are open, efficient, and capable of competing with those from larger U.S.-based companies.

In June 2023, one month after founding, the company raised a record €105 million seed round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, including participation from investors such as Eric Schmidt, Xavier Niel, and JCDecaux Holding.[4][5]

In September 2023, Mistral released its first open-weight model, Mistral 7B, under the Apache License 2.0, including distribution via a BitTorrent magnet link and later on Hugging Face. This release was notable for being distributed via a torrent file, which sparked some controversy regarding distribution methods but highlighted the model's accessibility.[6][7]

In December 2023, Mistral announced Mixtral 8x7B, a sparse mixture of experts (SMoE) open-weight model.[8] That month it also raised €385 million in a second round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and Lightspeed, bringing the company's valuation to approximately $2 billion. The round included investment from Nvidia and Salesforce.[9]

In February 2024, Microsoft and Mistral announced a partnership to offer Mistral's models via Microsoft Azure, alongside a €15 million Microsoft investment structured to convert into equity in a subsequent round. The deal made Mistral's models available on the Azure cloud computing platform and established a research and development collaboration aimed at building applications for government and commercial customers. The arrangement drew review from EU competition authorities.[10][11][12]

In June 2024, Mistral raised €600 million at ~€5.8 billion valuation to scale compute and go-to-market.[13][14]

On September 9, 2025, the company announced a €1.7 billion Series C led by ASML, at €11.7 billion post-money; ASML became the largest shareholder (~11%).[15][2]

Products and services

Models and APIs

Mistral offers a family of text and multimodal LLMs accessible via API and through partner clouds (for example Azure AI, Amazon SageMaker, GitHub Models). Releases include open-weight and proprietary models geared toward cost-efficient inference, reasoning, coding assistance, embeddings, OCR, and audio input.[16][17][18]

Selected model releases
Date Model Type / modality Parameters (approx.) License / availability Notes / source
2023-09-27 Mistral 7B Text LLM 7.3B Apache-2.0 (open weights) First release; distributed via torrent and Hugging Face. Utilizes Grouped-Query Attention (GQA) and Sliding Window Attention (SWA) for faster inference and reduced memory usage.[6][7]
2023-12-11 Mixtral 8x7B Text LLM (SMoE) ~46.7B (8×7B experts; ~12.9B active) Apache-2.0 (open weights) Open-weight mixture of experts model. For each token, it routes through two of its eight "expert" networks, significantly reducing computational cost while achieving the performance of a much larger dense model.[8]
2024-04-10 Mixtral 8x22B Text LLM (SMoE) 141B (total); 39B (active) Apache-2.0 (open weights) Larger MoE model with 64K token context window. Released via a torrent link on X.[19]
2024-02-26 Mistral Large Text LLM (proprietary) Unknown Commercial API The company's flagship model, designed for complex reasoning tasks. Fluent in multiple languages including French, German, Spanish, and Italian.[20]
2024-05-29 Codestral Code LLM ~22B (initial) Open weights (permissive) First code-specialist model. Supports 80+ programming languages including Python, Java, C++, JavaScript, and Bash.[21]
2024-07 Codestral Mamba Code LLM 7B Apache-2.0 (open weights) Uses the Mamba architecture for efficient code generation with linear time inference.[22]
2024-09 Pixtral 12B Multimodal LLM 12B + 400M vision encoder Apache-2.0 (open weights) First multimodal model capable of processing both text and images.[23]
2024-11-18 Le Chat (product) Assistant UI (chat) - SaaS (free & Pro) Major updates to Le Chat interface and features.[24]
2025-02-06 Le Chat (mobile) iOS & Android apps - Apps + enterprise private deploys (announced) Mobile availability and Pro tier noted.[25]
2025-05-07 Mistral Medium 3 Text/vision LLM (enterprise) n/a API / partner clouds Cost-efficient SOTA-class mid-size model.[26][27]
2025-06-10 Magistral Small Reasoning LLM (open) ~24B Apache-2.0 (open weights) First reasoning model family; open variant.[28][29]
2025-06-10 Magistral Medium Reasoning LLM (proprietary) n/a API / Le Chat Enterprise reasoning model; higher capability tier.[28][30]
2025-07–09 Voxtral (Small/Mini) Audio-input / transcription models - Open weights / API Audio input and transcription models in 2025 docs.[16]
2025-07/08 Codestral 2508 Code LLM (FIM, test gen) - API Updated code model with 256k context.[16]

La Plateforme

La Plateforme is Mistral AI's API service, which allows developers to integrate its commercial models into their own applications. The platform offers different pricing tiers based on model choice and usage, providing a scalable solution for businesses. Features include pay-per-token pricing model, fine-tuning capabilities, multiple deployment options (cloud, on-premises, edge), and support for both instruction-following and fill-in-the-middle code generation.[31]

Le Chat

Mistral's assistant product Le Chat (pronounced /lə ʃa/ in French, meaning "the cat") is delivered as a web app and (since February 2025) on iOS and Android. Launched in February 2024, it provides users with direct access to Mistral's models. The company positions Le Chat for search, coding, vision, and enterprise workflows, with a Pro tier for advanced models and features. Key features include:

  • Free tier with access to latest models
  • Pro tier starting at $14.99 per month
  • Team and Enterprise tiers for business use
  • Multimodal capabilities (text and image processing)
  • Document analysis and OCR
  • Web search integration
  • Memory system for persistent context across conversations
  • Integration with 20+ enterprise platforms through Model Context Protocol (MCP)
  • Deep research mode for comprehensive analysis[24][25]

Distribution and partnerships

Mistral distributes models through its own platform and via cloud partners, including Microsoft Azure (Azure AI model catalog), with Mistral Large first available on Azure in February 2024; the partnership attracted EU competition scrutiny.[10][11][12] Mistral Medium 3 is also published through partner marketplaces such as GitHub Models and AWS's Amazon SageMaker.[17][18]

Philosophy and Strategy

Mistral AI's strategy is built on a dual approach:

  1. Fostering Open Source: By releasing powerful models like Mistral 7B and Mixtral 8x7B under open licenses, the company aims to democratize access to AI technology, promote transparency, and prevent the technology from being controlled by a few large corporations. This approach also allows the community to build upon and audit the models, accelerating innovation and safety research.
  2. Commercial Excellence: Through its proprietary models and API services, Mistral AI competes at the frontier of AI capabilities. The revenue generated from these commercial offerings funds the research and development required to create both open and closed models.

The company has emphasized computational efficiency in its model architecture, often achieving performance comparable to larger, more resource-intensive models from competitors. This focus on efficiency makes their models more accessible and cost-effective to deploy. The company's mission is to "put frontier AI in the hands of everyone" and democratize access to AI technology, with particular emphasis on European digital sovereignty, privacy-first approach with on-premises deployment options, and multilingual support (particularly European languages).[1]

Technology

Mistral's open-weight releases emphasize efficient inference and permissive licensing (Apache-2.0). Notable innovations include:

Technical Architecture

Sliding Window Attention

Mistral models utilize sliding window attention (SWA) mechanism where each layer attends to the previous 4,096 hidden states, enabling efficient processing of longer sequences while reducing memory requirements.[6]

Mixture of Experts

Mixtral models employ sparse mixture of experts architecture where a router network selects 2 out of 8 experts to process each token, enabling the model to have 56B total parameters while only using 13B active parameters per forward pass. This architecture balances quality and cost.[8]

Mamba Architecture

Codestral Mamba uses the Mamba2 architecture, a state space model offering linear time inference and the ability to model sequences of infinite length, particularly beneficial for code generation tasks.[22]

Reasoning Models

Later offerings (Magistral) focus on reasoning-centric behavior with majority-vote decoding options.[28]

Funding

Date Round Amount Lead Investor Valuation
June 2023 Seed €105 million ($117 million) Lightspeed Venture Partners Unknown
December 2023 Series A €385 million ($415 million) Andreessen Horowitz ~$2 billion
February 2024 Series A Extension €15 million ($16.3 million) Microsoft ~$2 billion
June 2024 Series B €600 million ($640 million) General Catalyst €5.8 billion ($6.2 billion)
September 2025 Series C €1.7 billion ($2 billion) ASML €11.7 billion ($13.8 billion)

Notable investors include Lightspeed Venture Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Nvidia, Samsung Venture Investment Corporation, Salesforce Ventures, DST Global, Index Ventures, Bpifrance, IBM, Eric Schmidt, and French tech entrepreneur Xavier Niel. ASML became the largest shareholder (~11%) after the Series C round.[4][5][9][13][14][15][2]

Partnerships and ecosystem

Press reports and company statements cite enterprise traction across European corporates and global partners:

Strategic partnerships

  • ASML - Lead investor in Series C round with strategic partnership for AI solutions in semiconductor design[32]
  • Microsoft - Integration with Azure for model distribution (2024)[10]
  • CMA CGM - €100 million five-year deal for AI solutions in maritime transport and logistics[33]
  • Cisco - AI agents for customer experience (2025)[34]
  • Stellantis - Enterprise-wide AI deployment in automotive (2025)[35]
  • TotalEnergies - AI innovation in energy sector (2025)[36]
  • ALTEN - AI solutions in engineering (2025)[37]
  • Capgemini - Adoption of generative AI models[38]
  • Agence France-Presse (AFP) - Agreement allowing Le Chat to access AFP's text archives dating back to 1983[39]

Enterprise customers

Mistral positions its open-weight options for on-premises deployment and data-sovereign settings, while its proprietary models target higher accuracy and reasoning performance via hosted APIs. Enterprise customers include BNP Paribas, Orange, and others.[3][16]

Regulatory and policy context

Mistral's February 2024 investment and cloud partnership with Microsoft drew attention from the European Commission as part of broader reviews of Big Tech's AI alliances. Both companies stated they would cooperate with information requests. The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) cleared the partnership in May 2024, finding Microsoft did not have "material influence" over Mistral.[11][40][41]

Controversies

Mistral AI has faced several controversies:

  • Microsoft Partnership Scrutiny: The 2024 deal with Microsoft raised concerns in the EU about reinforcing U.S. tech dominance and deviating from open-source principles, as it involved a closed-source model.[11][42]
  • Adviser Conflict: Former French digital minister Cédric O's role as an adviser sparked debates over potential conflicts of interest.[39]
  • Model Release Method: The initial torrent distribution of Mistral 7B in 2023 was criticized for being unconventional.[43]

Despite these issues, Mistral AI continues to emphasize its European roots and open approach to AI development.

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Mistral AI - "About us." https://mistral.ai/about
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Reuters - "Mistral AI raises €1.7 billion as ASML becomes its top shareholder (valuation €11.7bn)." https://www.reuters.com/technology/mistral-ai-raises-17-billion-euros-asml-becomes-its-top-shareholder-2025-09-09/
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Le Monde - "Mistral AI valorisée 11,7 milliards d'euros… emploie 350 personnes." https://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2025/09/09/ia-la-start-up-francaise-mistral-ai-valorisee-11-7-milliards-d-euros-apres-avoir-leve-1-7-milliard_6640102_3234.html
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Reuters - "France's Mistral AI raises 105 million euros shortly after being set up." https://www.reuters.com/technology/french-company-mistral-ai-raises-105-mln-euros-shortly-after-being-set-up-2023-06-13/
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Financial Times - "Four-week-old AI start-up raises record €105mn in European push." https://www.ft.com/content/cf939ea4-d96c-4908-896a-48a74381f251
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Mistral AI - "Mistral 7B (Product announcement)." https://mistral.ai/news/announcing-mistral-7b
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 TechCrunch - "Mistral AI makes its first large language model free for everyone." https://techcrunch.com/2023/09/27/mistral-ai-makes-its-first-large-language-model-free-for-everyone/
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Mistral AI - "Mixtral of experts (Mixtral 8x7B)." https://mistral.ai/news/mixtral-of-experts
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 Reuters - "Mistral AI raises 385 mln euros in second round in seven months." https://www.reuters.com/technology/mistral-ai-raises-385-mln-euros-second-round-seven-months-2023-12-11/
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 Microsoft Azure Blog - "Introducing Mistral Large on Azure in partnership with Mistral AI." https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/microsoft-and-mistral-ai-announce-new-partnership-to-accelerate-ai-innovation-and-introduce-mistral-large-first-on-azure/
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 11.3 Reuters - "Microsoft's deal with Mistral AI faces EU scrutiny." https://www.reuters.com/technology/microsofts-deal-with-mistral-ai-faces-eu-scrutiny-2024-02-27/
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Ars Technica - "Microsoft partners with Mistral AI, drawing EU scrutiny." https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/02/microsoft-faces-scrutiny-from-eu-after-partnership-with-openai-rival-mistral/
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 Financial Times - "Mistral secures €600mn funding as valuation soars to almost €6bn." https://www.ft.com/content/7a70a8a6-4a2a-47c5-8483-d0b829f32ae6
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 Le Monde - "La start-up française Mistral AI lève 600 millions d'euros (valorisation 5,8 Md€)." https://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2024/06/11/intelligence-artificielle-la-start-up-francaise-mistral-ai-leve-600-millions-d-euros_6238742_3234.html
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 Mistral AI - "Mistral AI raises 1.7B€ (Series C) to accelerate technological progress." https://mistral.ai/news/mistral-ai-raises-1-7-b-to-accelerate-technological-progress-with-ai
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 16.2 16.3 Mistral Docs - "Models Overview (2024–2025 index)." https://docs.mistral.ai/getting-started/models/models_overview/
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 GitHub Changelog - "Mistral Medium 3 (25.05) now GA in GitHub Models." https://github.blog/changelog/2025-05-14-mistral-medium-3-25-05-is-now-generally-available-in-github-models/
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 InfoQ - "Mistral Unveils Medium 3." https://www.infoq.com/news/2025/05/mistral-ai-medium/
  19. ↑ TechCrunch - "Mistral makes its next open source model, Mixtral 8x22B, available for download." https://techcrunch.com/2024/04/10/mistral-releases-mixtral-8x22b-a-powerful-open-source-model/
  20. ↑ Mistral AI - "Au Large: Announcing Mistral Large." https://mistral.ai/news/mistral-large
  21. ↑ Mistral AI - "Codestral." https://mistral.ai/news/codestral
  22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 Mistral AI - "Codestral Mamba." https://mistral.ai/news/codestral-mamba
  23. ↑ Mistral AI - "Announcing Pixtral 12B." https://mistral.ai/news/pixtral-12b
  24. ↑ 24.0 24.1 Mistral AI - "Mistral has entered the chat." https://mistral.ai/news/mistral-chat
  25. ↑ 25.0 25.1 Mistral AI - "The all new le Chat: Your AI assistant for life and work." https://mistral.ai/news/all-new-le-chat
  26. ↑ Mistral AI - "Medium is the new large." https://mistral.ai/news/mistral-medium-3
  27. ↑ TechCrunch - "Mistral claims its newest AI model delivers leading performance for the price." https://techcrunch.com/2025/05/07/mistral-claims-its-newest-ai-model-delivers-leading-performance-for-the-price/
  28. ↑ 28.0 28.1 28.2 Mistral AI - "Magistral." https://mistral.ai/news/magistral
  29. ↑ Reuters - "France's Mistral launches Europe's first AI reasoning model." https://www.reuters.com/business/frances-mistral-launches-europes-first-ai-reasoning-model-2025-06-10/
  30. ↑ TechCrunch - "Mistral releases a pair of AI reasoning models." https://techcrunch.com/2025/06/10/mistral-releases-a-pair-of-ai-reasoning-models/
  31. ↑ Mistral AI - "La Plateforme." https://mistral.ai/
  32. ↑ ASML - "ASML, Mistral AI enter strategic partnership." https://www.asml.com/news/press-releases/2025/asml-mistral-ai-enter-strategic-partnership
  33. ↑ Variety - "French AI Startup Mistral Seeks $10 Billion Valuation in New Fundraising Round." https://variety.com/2025/digital/global/french-ai-startup-mistral-valuation-fundraising-round-1236478508/
  34. ↑ Cisco - "Cisco and Mistral AI Transform the Customer Experience with AI." https://newsroom.cisco.com/c/r/newsroom/en/us/a/y2025/m02/cisco-and-mistral-ai-partner-to-deliver-on-cisco-mission-to-transform-the-customer-experience-with-ai.html
  35. ↑ Stellantis - "Stellantis and Mistral AI Expand Their Collaboration to Accelerate Enterprise-Wide AI Adoption." https://www.stellantis.com/en/news/press-releases/2025/october/stellantis-and-mistral-ai-expand-their-collaboration-to-accelerate-enterprise-wide-ai-adoption
  36. ↑ TotalEnergies - "TotalEnergies to Collaborate with Mistral AI to Increase the Application of Artificial." https://totalenergies.com/news/press-releases/totalenergies-collaborate-mistral-ai-increase-application-artificial
  37. ↑ ALTEN - "ALTEN and Mistral AI announce a strategic partnership." https://www.alten.com/alten-and-mistral-ai-announce-a-strategic-partnership-for-the-deployment-of-artificial-intelligence-solutions-in-technological-engineering-and-it-services/
  38. ↑ Capgemini - "Capgemini partners with Mistral AI to spearhead the adoption of new frontier generative AI models." https://www.capgemini.com/news/press-releases/capgemini-partners-with-mistral-ai-to-spearhead-the-adoption-of-new-frontier-generative-ai-models/
  39. ↑ 39.0 39.1 TechCrunch - "What is Mistral AI? Everything to know about the OpenAI competitor." https://techcrunch.com/2025/09/09/what-is-mistral-ai-everything-to-know-about-the-openai-competitor/
  40. ↑ Investopedia - "EU to analyze Microsoft's investment in Mistral AI." https://www.investopedia.com/microsoft-investment-in-mistral-ai-draws-eu-regulator-scrutiny-amid-competition-concerns-8600836
  41. ↑ CNBC - "Microsoft's Mistral partnership avoids merger probe by British regulators." https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/17/microsoft-mistral-partnership-avoids-merger-probe-by-uk-regulators.html
  42. ↑ Sifted - "Mistral's deal with Microsoft is causing controversy." https://sifted.eu/articles/mistral-microsoft-deal-controversy
  43. ↑ Medium - "Controversy surrounding Mistral AI's release." https://medium.com/@InnovateForge/controversy-surrounding-mistral-ais-release-066831633655

External Links

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