Mistral AI, a French startup founded in 2023, has emerged as one of the most promising tech startups in France and a strong competitor to OpenAI. Despite its $6 billion valuation, the company still faces challenges in competing with OpenAI, but its recent launch of chat assistant Le Chat on mobile app stores has generated significant hype, particularly in its home country. French President Emmanuel Macron even endorsed Le Chat, urging citizens to download the app instead of OpenAI's ChatGPT.

Mistral AI's ambition is to "put frontier AI in the hands of everyone," emphasizing its commitment to openness in AI. The company's suite of models includes Mistral Large 2, Pixtral Large, Codestral, "Les Ministraux," and Mistral Saba, which cater to various applications and languages. In March 2025, Mistral AI introduced Mistral OCR, an optical character recognition (OCR) API that can convert PDFs into text files, making it easier for AI models to ingest.

The company's founders, Arthur Mensch, Timothée Lacroix, and Guillaume Lample, have a background in AI research at major U.S. tech companies with significant operations in Paris. Co-founding advisers include Jean-Charles Samuelian-Werve, Charles Gorintin, and former digital minister Cédric O, whose involvement sparked controversy due to his previous role.

While not all of Mistral AI's models are open source, the company provides weight access to its free models under the Apache 2.0 license. Research models, such as Mistral NeMo, which was built in collaboration with Nvidia, are open-sourced. Mistral AI generates revenue through Le Chat's paid tiers, APIs with usage-based pricing, and strategic partnerships. The company's revenue is reportedly still in the eight-digit range, according to multiple sources.

Mistral AI has closed several significant partnerships, including a deal with Microsoft for distributing its AI models through Microsoft's Azure platform, which included a €15 million investment. The company has also partnered with Agence France-Presse (AFP) to allow Chat to query the AFP's entire text archive dating back to 1983. Other strategic partners include France's army and job agency, German defense tech startup Helsing, IBM, Orange, and Stellantis.

As of February 2025, Mistral AI has raised around €1 billion in capital, including debt financing and several equity financing rounds. The company's investors include Lightspeed Venture Partners, Bpifrance, Eric Schmidt, Exor Ventures, and Salesforce, among others. Mistral AI's valuation has reached $6 billion, with CEO Arthur Mensch stating that the company is "not for sale" and aiming for an IPO.

Despite the challenges ahead, Mistral AI's emergence as a strong competitor to OpenAI is significant for the European AI landscape. As the company continues to scale its revenue and expand its partnerships, it will be interesting to see how it navigates the complex AI ecosystem and maintains its independence.

This story was originally published on February 28, 2025, and will be regularly updated to reflect new developments in Mistral AI's journey.