Yeah, whatevs, dude.
An exclusive from EU-Startups, October 9:
Ecosia’s decision to drop French AI provider Mistral is not a move towards Chinese technology, but rather a shift towards more affordable, energy-efficient open AI models, founder and CEO Christian Kroll clarified in a conversation with EU-Startups.
“We’ll probably be using Melious.ai in future. Unlike Mistral, this is a European company that offers high-quality, affordable AI inference powered by green electricity,” shared Christian in an exclusive interview.
The Berlin-based search engine recently made headlines after POLITICO reported that it was replacing Mistral with open models, including Chinese offerings such as Alibaba’s Qwen, Z.ai’s GLM and Moonshot AI’s Kimi.
However, Christian stressed that the company’s focus is on open models rather than their country of origin. These offer lower costs, greater flexibility and reduced energy consumption, aligning with Ecosia’s environmental mission.
Addressing concerns about political censorship in Chinese AI models, Christian explained that Ecosia can switch to alternative models when dealing with sensitive subjects, such as questions about Taiwan. The company is also working to eliminate political biases from its AI-generated answers.
The models are accessed through German platform Melious, which operates on European infrastructure powered by low-carbon energy. This allows Ecosia to use internationally developed AI while keeping its infrastructure and data processing in Europe....
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