Mistral AI is a French artificial intelligence company specializing in developing open-source large language models (LLMs). Founded in April 2023 by former researchers from Meta Platforms and Google DeepMind, the company is headquartered in Paris.

Key Developments and Models

Mistral 7B

Released in September 2023, this 7.3-billion parameter model outperforms Meta's LLaMA 2 13B on various benchmarks, including code and reasoning tasks. It utilizes grouped-query and sliding window attention mechanisms for efficient inference and can be fine-tuned for chat and other applications.

Mixtral 8x7B

Introduced in December 2023, this model employs a sparse mixture of experts architecture, comprising eight distinct groups of "experts," resulting in a total of 46.7 billion usable parameters. Each token utilizes 12.9 billion parameters, balancing performance with computational efficiency.

Mistral Large 2

Launched in July 2024, this model features 123 billion parameters and a context length of 128,000 tokens. It is fluent in multiple languages, including various programming languages, and is competitive with Meta's Llama 3.1 405B, particularly in programming-related tasks.

Funding and Valuation

In June 2024, Mistral AI secured €600 million ($645 million) in a funding round led by General Catalyst, with participation from existing investors. This investment elevated the company's valuation to €5.8 billion ($6.2 billion), positioning it as a leading AI startup in Europe.

Mission and Impact

Mistral AI aims to democratize artificial intelligence by focusing on open-source innovation, providing accessible and customizable AI models for developers and businesses. Its rapid growth and significant funding underscore Europe's potential in the global AI landscape.

Further Information

• Europe's answer to OpenAI launched in 2023. Now it's worth €6bn
• Arthur Mensch
• Mistral AI