When your company (Mistral) is not just the national standard-bearer but the flagship for the whole continent it's amazing how many companies come knocking on your door.
From the Wall Street Journal, July 21:
Microsoft and Mistral AI expanded their artificial intelligence partnership on Tuesday, with a multibillion-dollar commitment from Microsoft to help the French AI company build data centers in Europe.
The deal is the latest attempt by both companies to reach a greater number of European and enterprise AI clients, as the two go up against rival AI labs and other U.S. tech giants.
“Distribution is king,” said Mistral Chief Executive and Co-founder Arthur Mensch, adding that Microsoft’s heft would facilitate the AI company’s expansion with businesses in Europe and across the world.
Mistral has touted the importance of Europe’s independence from U.S. technology companies. At the same time, it has been ramping up its push for enterprise clients—an area where U.S. behemoth Microsoft offers immense reach.
For Microsoft, working with Mistral is part of the European digital commitments it made last year, in which it pledged to increase data-center capacity in the European Union. Its latest move comes as the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, is considering classifying Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform as a gatekeeper under the bloc’s Digital Markets Act—a designation that requires companies to take extra steps to ensure they aren’t stifling competition.
“Our partnership with Mistral is becoming a core pillar of our broader European efforts,” Brad Smith, Microsoft’s vice chair and president, said in an interview. “This is a moment when European customers are especially focused on resilient supply of AI.”
The partnership includes a “multibillion-dollar” agreement from Microsoft—which it declined to specify—to support Mistral’s data center build-out in Europe. As the company builds a “GPU fleet” in Europe, some of those AI chips will be used by Microsoft to serve its customers, said Mensch, referring to the data centers that house graphics processing units.
Microsoft expects to “get a return” when customers use its cloud platform Azure, said Smith, while Mistral will “get a return” when customers use its AI models.
Also as part of the deal, two of Mistral’s top AI models—Medium 3.5 and OCR 4—will be available in Microsoft’s products, including Microsoft Foundry and Microsoft Copilot Studio. Mistral’s models will additionally be available on Azure Local, a Microsoft infrastructure offering that lets customers run their information-technology systems in the cloud or their own data centers. Smith said that option would allow customers to be “disconnected” from the cloud.
“This responds to what we’re hearing from customers and the market,” Smith said. “There is a heightened need for customers to have more choice and more control, and that’s what this gives them.”
This isn’t Microsoft’s first investment in Mistral. The two companies, which began working together in 2023, are targeting a similar segment of European and global business customers that are in regulated sectors such as financial services, manufacturing and healthcare....
....MUCH MORE
It's also another sign of how MSFT is distancing itself from OpenAI. Another couple years and Mr. Nadella will be saying "Sam who?"
If interested, quite a few of our Mistral links are in July 17's "Airbus migrating 70 critical apps from AWS to France's Scaleway amid digital sovereignty push".
And a couple I forgot to include:
"Why Paris may be the most important AI city outside Silicon Valley"
Though this is an infomercial for one of TechCrunch's products it also happens to be true, though Shenzhen could probably make a claim to that moniker as well....
FrenchTech: "Mistral launches Industrial Engineering AI with Airbus, BMW and EDF as headline customers" (plus rebutting the Pope)
And a couple more from the hazy depths of time gone by (2024):
FrenchTech: "Mistral AI, Europe’s OpenAI rival, adds top LLM to Amazon Bedrock"
FrenchTech: Mistral AI Is Cutting Deals Right and Left
Some adroit, some gauche....
I am so sorry.
