What the fuck is the point of this?

What is Mistral bringing to the table for Firefox? There is nothing "open" about this in any way.

FF needs to either profile itself as the no-ai-by-default browser, or it needs to just have OpenAI/Anthropic/Mistral/DeepSeek bid for the default spot - like they do with Google search.

I'm happy Mistral exists. I'm happy Firefox exists.

None of this shows any synergy i'm excited about.

Maybe FF believes there is a group of users who are still on the fence about using FF - until they can pitch them a first-class build-in AI story that goes with the anti-establishment vibe?

I somehow doubt that's the pitch & potential userbase they should be focussing on.