Paris, France – In a surprising turn of events, Mistral AI, the French startup dubbed the European OpenAI, has lauded the emergence of Chinese AI company DeepSeek, viewing it as a catalyst for growth in the open-source AI ecosystem. This endorsement comes amidst rising concerns in the West about DeepSeek’s rapid advancements.
Arthur Mensch, CEO of Mistral, has been a vocal advocate for open source since founding the Paris-based company in 2023. Open source, in its broadest sense, refers to software that anyone can use or modify.
We like to think of DeepSeek as the Mistral of China, Mensch told Business Insider in a recent interview. We think it’s a pivotal moment for open-source models, with companies like Mistral and DeepSeek participating and building on each other, constantly evolving.
Like DeepSeek, many of Mistral’s large language models (LLMs) publicly share their training weights, meaning they primarily share model parameters rather than complete codebases. This approach allows for greater collaboration and innovation within the AI community.
Mensch is among a growing number of voices in the tech industry highlighting the benefits of open source, including faster development cycles and the elimination of hefty licensing fees. We have always believed that open source will become mainstream because it has a flywheel effect, where everyone is building on each other, making things more efficient, Mensch told Business Insider.
The release of DeepSeek’s R1 model last month sparked debate among investors about the value of large-scale AI infrastructure investments. DeepSeek claims that R1’s performance rivals that of competitors like ChatGPT, but at a fraction of the cost. This has not only raised questions about the efficiency of large models but also prompted the AI industry to re-evaluate the merits of open versus closed-source approaches.
Even OpenAI CEO Sam Altman acknowledged his previous stance against open-source AI as potentially being on the wrong side of history during a Reddit AMA earlier this month. He hinted that the company might need to explore a new strategy, moving away from its predominantly closed-source model.
Mensch emphasized that Mistral prioritizes efficiency, particularly in its use of capital. With $1 billion in funding from investors such as Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed, and General Catalyst, Mistral has become one of Europe’s best-funded AI startups. It doesn’t take $100 billion to get a company to adopt a technology and apply it to its own use case. We are a very well-capitalized company, but we are not going to spend hundreds of billions of dollars, Mensch stated.
Beyond championing its open-source ambitions, Mensch also told Business Insider that Mistral is expanding its capabilities in agentic AI, further solidifying its position as a key player in the rapidly evolving AI landscape.
This strategic embrace of open source and efficient resource allocation positions Mistral as a unique force in the global AI race, one that welcomes collaboration and innovation from across the globe, even from competitors like DeepSeek. The future of AI may well be shaped by this new spirit of cooperation.
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