Microsoft and Mistral are expanding their strategic partnership with a multi-billion-dollar deal to build out AI infrastructure in Europe. Mistral is adding thousands of Nvidia Vera Rubin GPUs, and Microsoft will tap that capacity for its cloud and AI services. Mistral's Medium 3.5 and OCR 4 models are now available in Microsoft Foundry. Medium 3.5 is also available in Copilot Studio. Companies can run Mistral models through Azure Local in the cloud, in their own environments, or completely offline. The offering targets regulated industries like finance, healthcare, and manufacturing. Microsoft President Brad Smith said Europe should be able to use powerful AI without giving up control over its data.
Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch sees the partnership as a way to reach companies and public institutions worldwide. Mensch also recently warned that companies risk exposing trade secrets when they use closed AI models. The company, founded in 2023, recently grew its revenue twentyfold to a run rate above $400 million. It invested 1.2 billion euros in data centers in Sweden and, according to Bloomberg, is negotiating a new funding round of about 3 billion euros at a valuation of roughly 20 billion euros. Mistral recently renamed its chatbot Le Chat to Vibe and repositioned it as an AI productivity tool with Work Mode and Code Mode.
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