Mistral does not want to be bought out by a larger player, and instead is angling for an IPO.
Mistral is not for sale, but wants to go public. So says CEO and co-founder Arthur Mensch to Bloomberg on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos. Mistral is the main European alternative to OpenAI and ChatGPT. The company has only been around since 2023 but has experts coming from Google DeepMind and Meta on its payroll.
Last year, Mistral raised 600 million euros. Mensch positions the company on the basis of typical European strengths: its AI models are said to be more efficient, and customers can rest on two ears regarding their data as it does not leave the EU.
David vs. Goliaths
Still, Mistral is a David versus a battalion of Goliaths. OpenAI gets full support from Microsoft in the form of billions in cash and computing power, while challenger Anthropic can count on similar budgets with help from AWS. OpenAI turned over $6.6 billion last year; Anthropic is in talks to bring in $2 billion in investment.
That doesn’t stop Mistral from launching several models. In doing so, the focus is not only on LLMs, but also on deliberately compact Small Language Models that fit on laptops and phones.
Mensch does not want to sell Mistal to the highest bidder, and is making do with the funds it has. The company is opening offices in Singapore to strengthen its position in that region, and is also growing in Europe and even the US. The ultimate plan is an Initial Public Offering (IPO) and thus an IPO. When that is scheduled is not clear.