As the American tech giant looks to increase its presence in the rapidly developing artificial intelligence market, Microsoft on Monday announced a new relationship with French start-up Mistral AI, which is Europe’s answer to ChatGPT manufacturer OpenAI.
Microsoft announced in a statement that it was contributing to the 10-month-old, 2 billion euro ($2.1 billion) company in order to assist it reach new markets internationally and open up new economic prospects. A Microsoft representative affirmed on Tuesday that the company was contributing 15 million euros, which would be turned into stock in Mistral during its subsequent fundraising round.
As per the agreement, Mistral will become the second business to host its large language models (LLM) on Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform, following OpenAI, with LLM being the technology underlying generative AI products.
Additionally, Microsoft will facilitate the start-up’s access to new clients by introducing “Le Chat,” or “the cat,” a multilingual conversational assistant in the ChatGPT style.
According to Microsoft President Brad Smith, the agreement represents the company’s “important” support of European technology.
Smith expressed his belief that today is a crucial day for Microsoft’s technological assistance for Europe at the Mobile World Congress conference held in Barcelona, Spain.
In essence, he continued, “we’re agreeing to a long-term cooperation with Mistral AI so that they can train and implement their next generation AI models on our infrastructure and AI data centers, starting right away.”
Growing scrutiny
This is in response to EU antitrust authorities pressuring Microsoft over its rumored $13 billion investment in San Francisco-based OpenAI. When asked if this expenditure was made to allay worries about competition, Smith responded that the company was dedicated to providing a wide range of products.
“We have to make it clear that this is about more than just American goods and Microsoft technology.” He claimed that this will also serve as a catalyst for innovation, technology, and economic expansion in Europe.
According to Smith, the investment in Mistral AI will also provide funding for research and development, including the creation of AI models for European public sector services. Smith expressed his belief that Europe is in need of, and deserves, a diverse array of offerings.
Telefónica, a major Spanish telecom company, stated earlier on Monday that it had reached an agreement to incorporate Microsoft’s Azure AI Studio into its digital ecosystem, Kernel. This would enable employees to use generative AI language models to interpret data.
In the midst of an increasing hype surrounding the cutting-edge technology, rival digital behemoths like Google and Amazon have also been increasing their investments in AI. Due to Nvidia, a manufacturer of AI chips, posting stellar performance, world markets reached all-time highs last week.
