What Is Mistral Ai? Everything To Know About The Openai Competitor

Mistral AI, nan French institution down AI adjunct Le Chat and respective foundational models, is officially regarded arsenic 1 of France’s astir promising tech startups and is arguably nan only European institution that could compete pinch OpenAI. But compared to its $6 cardinal valuation, its world marketplace stock is still comparatively low. 

However, nan caller motorboat of its chat adjunct connected mobile app stores was met pinch immoderate hype, peculiarly successful its location country. “Go and download Le Chat, which is made by Mistral, alternatively than ChatGPT by OpenAI — aliases thing else,” French president Emmanuel Macron said in a TV interview up of nan AI Action Summit successful Paris successful February 2025.

While this activity of attraction whitethorn beryllium encouraging, Mistral AI still faces challenges successful competing pinch nan likes of OpenAI — and successful doing truthful while keeping up pinch its self-definition arsenic “the world’s greenest and starring independent AI lab.”

What is Mistral AI?

Mistral AI has raised important amounts of backing since its creation successful 2023 pinch nan ambition to “put frontier AI successful nan hands of everyone.” While this isn’t a nonstop jab astatine OpenAI, nan motto is meant to item nan company’s defense for openness successful AI.

Its replacement to ChatGPT, chat adjunct Le Chat, is now besides available connected iOS and Android. It reached 1 cardinal downloads successful nan 2 weeks pursuing its mobile release, moreover grabbing France’s apical spot for free downloads connected nan iOS App Store.

In July 2025, Mistral AI updated Le Chat pinch new features that bring it person to rival full-stack AI chatbots: a caller “deep research” mode, autochthonal multilingual reasoning, and precocious image editing. This update besides includes nan summation of Projects, which lets users group chats, documents, and ideas into focused spaces.

This comes successful summation to Mistral AI’s suite of models, which includes: 

• Mistral Large 2, nan superior ample connection exemplary replacing Mistral Large.
• Pixtral Large, unveiled successful 2024 arsenic a caller summation to nan Pixtral family of multimodal models.
• Magistral, its first family of reasoning models, launched successful June 2025.
• Mistral Medium 3, released successful May 2025 pinch nan committedness of providing ratio without compromising performance, and champion for coding and STEM tasks.
• Voxtral, Mistral’s first unfastened root AI audio model, released successful July 2025.
• Devstral, an AI exemplary designed for coding and openly disposable nether an Apache 2.0 license, meaning it tin beryllium utilized commercially without restriction.
  • In July 2025, Mistral AI introduced Devstral Medium, arsenic good arsenic an upgrade to Devstral Small, nether a collaboration betwixt Mistral AI and All Hands AI that puts accent connected agentic coding capabilities.
  • Devstral is besides 1 of nan 4 models powering coding adjunct Mistral Code.
• Codestral, an earlier generative AI exemplary for code, but whose licence banned commercialized applications.
• “Les Ministraux,” a family of models optimized for separator devices specified arsenic phones.
• Mistral Saba, focused connected Arabic language.

In March 2025, nan institution introduced Mistral OCR, an optical characteristic nickname (OCR) API that tin move immoderate PDF into a matter record to make it easier for AI models to ingest.

In May 2025, it released nan Mistral Agents API to “empower enterprises to usage AI successful much applicable and impactful ways,” according to its Head of Developer Relations, Sophia Yang.

In June 2025, Mistral AI besides released a vibe coding client, Mistral Code, to compete pinch incumbents for illustration Windsurf, Anysphere’s Cursor, and GitHub Copilot.

Who are Mistral AI’s founders?

Mistral AI’s 3 founders share a inheritance successful AI investigation astatine awesome U.S. tech companies pinch important operations successful Paris. CEO Arthur Mensch utilized to activity astatine Google’s DeepMind, while CTO Timothée Lacroix and main intelligence serviceman Guillaume Lample are erstwhile Meta staffers.

Co-founding advisers besides see Jean-Charles Samuelian-Werve (also a committee member) and Charles Gorintin from wellness security startup Alan, arsenic good arsenic erstwhile integer curate Cédric O, which has caused persistent controversy owed to his erstwhile role.

Are Mistral AI’s models unfastened source?

Not each of them. Mistral AI differentiates its premier models, whose weights are not disposable for commercialized purposes, from its free models, for which it provides weight entree nether nan Apache 2.0 license.

Free models see investigation models specified arsenic Mistral NeMo, which was built successful collaboration pinch Nvidia that nan startup open sourced successful July 2024.

How does Mistral AI make money?

While galore of Mistral AI’s offerings are free aliases now person free tiers, Mistral AI plans to thrust immoderate gross from Le Chat’s paid tiers. Introduced successful February 2025, Le Chat’s Pro scheme is priced astatine $14.99 a month.

On nan purely B2B side, Mistral AI monetizes its premier models done APIs pinch usage-based pricing. Enterprises tin besides licence these models, and nan institution apt besides generates a important stock of its gross from its strategical partnerships, immoderate of which it highlighted during nan Paris AI Summit.

Overall, however, Mistral AI’s gross is reportedly still successful nan eight-digit range, according to aggregate sources.

What partnerships has Mistral AI closed?

In 2024, Mistral AI entered a woody pinch Microsoft that included a strategical business for distributing its AI models done Microsoft’s Azure level and a €15 cardinal investment. The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) swiftly concluded that nan woody didn’t suffice for investigation owed to its mini size. However, it besides sparked immoderate criticism successful nan EU. 

In January 2025, Mistral AI signed a woody pinch property agency Agence France-Presse (AFP) to fto Chat query nan AFP’s full matter archive making love backmost to 1983.

Mistral AI besides secured strategical partnerships pinch France’s army and job agency, Luxembourg, shipping elephantine CMA, German defense tech startup Helsing, IBM, Orange, and Stellantis.

In May 2025, Mistral AI announced it would participate successful nan creation of an AI Campus successful nan Paris region, arsenic portion of a associated task pinch UAE-investment patient MGX, NVIDIA, and France’s state-owned finance slope Bpifrance.

In June 2025, it was announced that opening successful 2026, Mistral will motorboat a European level dedicated to AI and powered by Nvidia processors, Mistral Compute. The initative was hailed arsenic ‘historic’ by Macron, who shared nan shape pinch Mensch and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang astatine nan VivaTech convention soon aft nan announcement.

In July 2025, it announced AI for Citizens, “a collaborative inaugural to thief States and nationalist institutions strategically harness AI for their group by transforming nationalist services, catalyzing innovation, and ensuring competitiveness.”

How overmuch backing has Mistral AI raised to date?

As of February 2025, Mistral AI raised astir €1 cardinal successful superior to date, astir $1.04 cardinal astatine nan existent speech rate. This includes immoderate indebtedness financing, arsenic good arsenic respective equity financing rounds raised successful adjacent succession.

In June 2023, and earlier it moreover released its first models, Mistral AI raised a record $112 cardinal seed round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. Sources astatine nan clip said nan seed information — Europe’s largest ever — weighted nan then-one-month-old startup astatine $260 million. 

Other investors successful this seed information included Bpifrance, Eric Schmidt, Exor Ventures, First Minute Capital, Headline, JCDecaux Holding, La Famiglia, LocalGlobe, Motier Ventures, Rodolphe Saadé, Sofina, and Xavier Niel.

Only six months later, it closed a Series A of €385 million ($415 cardinal astatine nan time), astatine a reported valuation of $2 billion. The information was led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), pinch information from existing backer Lightspeed, arsenic good arsenic BNP Paribas, CMA-CGM, Conviction, Elad Gil, General Catalyst, and Salesforce.

The $16.3 cardinal convertible investment that Microsoft made successful Mistral AI arsenic portion of their business announced successful February 2024 was presented arsenic a Series A extension, implying an unchanged valuation.

In June 2024, Mistral AI past raised €600 cardinal successful a operation of equity and debt (around $640 cardinal astatine nan speech complaint astatine nan time). The long-rumored round was led by General Catalyst astatine a $6 cardinal valuation, pinch notable investors, including Cisco, IBM, Nvidia, Samsung Venture Investment Corporation, and others.

Mistral AI is now reportedly successful talks to raise $1 billion successful equity from investors including Abu Dhabi’s MGX fund, has good arsenic hundreds of millions of euros successful debt.

How is Mistral AI approaching AI regulation?

Mensch was portion of a group of European CEOs who signed an unfastened letter successful July 2025 urging Brussels to ‘stop nan clock’ for 2 years earlier cardinal obligations of nan EU Artificial Intelligence Act participate into force. The European Commision is sticking to its original timeline.

What could a Mistral AI exit look like?

Mistral is “not for sale,” Mensch said successful January 2025 astatine nan World Economic Forum successful Davos. “Of course, [an IPO is] nan plan.” 

This makes sense, fixed really overmuch nan startup has raised truthful far: Even a ample waste whitethorn not supply precocious capable multiples for its investors, not to mention sovereignty concerns depending connected nan acquirer. 

However, nan only measurement to decidedly squash persistent acquisition rumors — lately naming Apple — is to standard its gross to levels that could moreover remotely warrant its astir $6 cardinal valuation. Either way, enactment tuned.

This communicative was primitively published connected February 28, 2025 and will beryllium regularly updated.