This collab comes with its own chatbot that could compete with OpenAI
Microsoft recently announced that it has entered into a new artificial intelligence collaboration with the French startup Mistral AI.
The partnership could reduce reliance on OpenAI
Through this new agreement between Microsoft and Mistral AI, the software giant has the potential to decrease its dependence on OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, as it develops the next iterations of its generative artificial intelligence products such as chatbots.
Though Mistral AI isn’t even a year old, Microsoft is already describing it as an “innovator and trailblazer” at the head of developing better and more cost-effective AI systems.
The financial terms of the agreement hadn’t been disclosed by either company at the time this article was written. That said, Microsoft did specify that the agreement involved a small investment into Mistral AI. This indicates that the company could be notably smaller than the investment it made into OpenAI, which was worth billions and involved a relationship lasting years and that has drawn scrutiny from US and European antitrust regulators.
Launching its own artificial intelligence chatbot
On the same day as the announcement of the agreement, Mistral AI released a public test version of Le Chat, its own artificial intelligence chatbot. On the launch day, there was so much interest in Le Chat that it became temporarily unavailable for part of the day, according to a company exec.
Mistral Large, the newest large language model from the company, was also announced at the same time. According to Mistral AI, it is at the same level as rivals such as GPT-4 from OpenAI, Claude 2 from Anthropic, and Gemini Pro from Google. Moreover, Mistral Large will be available on the Azure cloud computing platform.
Partnerships with large cloud providers
In earlier announcements Mistral AI had said that it was partnering with other large cloud providers such as Google and Amazon. It drew a considerable spotlight onto itself when it pulled in large quantities of investor funding to provide itself with a valuation in the multiple millions of dollars only months after it was founded in 2023.
