I also think that this is the best approach for businesses wanting to adopt AI to automate, streamline, etc their business.
The problem they have is that this is not a moat - their approach is easily reproducible.
If they can pull ahead in having the most number of pre-trained models (one for this ERP, one for that CRM, etc) and then being able to close sales to companies using these products and sell them on post-trained (give us your specific ERP customisations and we'll give you access to a model that is tailored to your business), then THAT is a moat.
But they need to do this without fanfare. Just close sales, and keep closing, basically. After all, even if other AI providers copy the process, the moat would already have been established for Mistral.
> The problem they have is that this is not a moat - their approach is easily reproducible.
My 2ct: Currently the moat may be that they are not US-American which is not reproducible by any of the US alternatives.
> My 2ct: Currently the moat may be that they are not US-American which is not reproducible by any of the US alternatives.
I hope you are right (I am in the process of finalising a product and one of the top-5 selling points contains "outside the jurisdiction of the US"), but in my experience, companies only pay lip service to ethics unless it hits their bottom line.
> but in my experience, companies only pay lip service to ethics unless it hits their bottom line.
Sure, Mistral AI is certainly not the market leader and probably never will be but we're not talking about being a market leader but about having a moat.
I instantly believe you when you tell me that many companies do not care. On the other hand there are companies that do. At least partially: ASML, Stellantis, AXA, BNP Paribas, the French ministry of defense, Helsing, SNCF, ... are all Mistral AI customers.
Mistral is still hosted on US providers, their EU centers are only in planning. Data access aside, if AWS or Azure (or Cloudflare) are ordered to pull the plug, it's still goodbye Mistral. Unless you use a third party hoster that is, or do it yourself of course - already possible.
To extend on that a little bit: they use data centers located in EU, but owned by US cloud providers. They can still pull the plug ofc, so it's only a small difference, but still
This moat doesn't seem to be much of a moat considering a non-US model doesn't even crack the top 5 by usage - except DeepSeek, which would be a strange choice for Europeans looking for data sovereignty.
> This moat doesn't seem to be much of a moat considering a non-US model doesn't even crack the top 5 by usage - except DeepSeek, which would be a strange choice for Europeans looking for data sovereignty.
Hang on, where are you getting the numbers from? I looked and I couldn't find any numbers on enterprises who opened their wallets for custom-trained models.
I looked, and because I believed that it might be a good business opportunity to explore, I did spend a bit of time trying to find numbers. I came away with the feeling that the winner in the AI space is going to be whoever successfully whitelabels their offering.
Right now that is Mistral, I think.
> considering a non-US model doesn't even crack the top 5 by usage
How do you measure "usage" in an enterprise/commercial context where no data on usage is available to you? I don't expect Mistral AI to make it's money on OpenRouter.
They offer self-hosted models for big corporate customers. I would also expect those serious about the security of their data to use that option. So you would never get the usage of those customers
If you are a company based in Europe it is silly to give your data security and privacy to a company based in Europe.
If you are in Iran, you don't want to give your data to your government.
If you are in France, you don't want to give your data to your government.
etc
If you are in France, and you host your e-mails in a datacenter in Hong-Kong, well good luck for the authorities to get it.
If you host it in "secure France", on the paper you will have more privacy and laws behind you, but in reality you are jumping into the mouth of the shark.
This is why governments are promoting: "yes yes, host here don't worry, we will protect you"
This flat out isn't true. Police forces / investigative authorities have been collaborating with one another since 1923: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpol . We have tons of examples of this working for the digital world as well (like Proton complying with Swiss legal orders at the behest of non-Swiss police forces for illegal activities in other countries).
The trick is to host your data in a country with a strong rule of law, and avoid illegal / geopolitical lines. If you're an American company hosting stuff in Russia, you can bet the GRU/SVR would be very happy to abuse it. If you're running a torrent site in Ukraine, you can bet the US would be very happy to claim extraterritorial magic jurisdiction and get you extradited from Poland.
As a French company, you're already beholden to French law and French legal decisions. "Data is hosted in Hong Kong" doesn't matter in the slightest, it only exposes you to more risk.
It's not about government but about trade secrets...
> well good luck for the authorities to get it.
"We want your data on X, here;'s a warrant."
"No."
"You are now under arrest for contempt of court."
People have some oddly silly views on what government can and can't do to people living in their territories.
And companies really really don't care if the government has their data.
> host your e-mails in a datacenter in Hong-Kong
Now China has it, gives it a competitor in China and your market share drops like a stone. Congrats! Great choice!
Meh, I feel like we are in the "cloud is bad phase" all over again.
Companies will use US ai models without issues in a few years.
Except the evidence today rather points to SOTA model + harness than fine tuned models.
> Except the evidence today rather points to SOTA model + harness than fine tuned models.
I have not seen that, actually. I still see most companies who want to jump into AI for the business sort of try RAG, but more often they just buy Chat accounts for their users.
The only place that harnesses appear to be used is in software development, but most companies aren't doing that either.