Mistral AI Partners with Microsoft for AI Solutions, Launches New Models

Mistral AI in Exciting New Partnership with Microsoft for Improved Customer Solutions

Paris-based startup Mistral AI is emerging as a notable competitor in the AI industry, particularly in the field of large language models, challenging established players like OpenAI and Anthropic.

Key Developments:

1. Launch of Mistral Large: Mistral AI has introduced “Mistral Large,” a new flagship large language model, boasting reasoning capabilities comparable to top-tier models like GPT-4 and Claude 2.

2. Introduction of Le Chat: Alongside Mistral Large, the company has launched a beta version of “Le Chat,” a chat assistant service akin to ChatGPT. Le Chat offers access to different models including Mistral Small, Mistral Large, and a concise prototype model named Mistral Next.

3. Impressive Funding and Growth: Mistral AI, founded in May 2023, has rapidly attracted significant funding, with a $113 million seed round and a subsequent $415 million round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z).

4. Background and Founding: The company, founded by alumni from Google’s DeepMind and Meta, initially focused on open-source AI but has since shifted strategy for its larger models. The company’s first model was released under an open source license, including model weights.

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6. Business Model and Pricing: Mistral AI’s business model resembles OpenAI’s, offering Mistral Large through a paid API with usage-based pricing. The cost is $8 per million input tokens and $24 per million output tokens. This pricing undercuts GPT-4 Turbo by about 20%.
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8. Technical Specifications: Mistral Large supports a 32k token context window and is compatible with multiple languages including English, French, Spanish, German, and Italian.
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10. Comparison with GPT-4 and Claude 2: While Mistral AI claims Mistral Large ranks second after GPT-4 in various benchmarks, the accuracy of these comparisons may vary due to potential benchmark cherry-picking and real-life usage disparities.

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12. Le Chat for Enterprises: A paid version of Le Chat tailored for enterprise clients is in the works, offering central billing and customizable moderation mechanisms.

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14. Partnership with Microsoft: Mistral AI has announced a partnership with Microsoft, making its models available to Azure customers. This collaboration could expand Mistral AI’s customer base and indicates broader collaboration possibilities between the two companies.

15. Microsoft’s AI Strategy: Microsoft, a major investor in OpenAI, is also embracing other AI models on its Azure platform, including a partnership with Meta for Llama large language models. This approach helps Microsoft retain Azure customers and may be advantageous in antitrust considerations.

In summary, Mistral AI is rapidly establishing itself as a significant player in the AI landscape, offering competitive alternatives to existing large language models and chat services, backed by substantial funding and strategic partnerships.