Mistral has been great for us as a provider for our EU-based company. We use Mistral Large 4, GLM 5.3 Flash and DeepSeek v4.1 Flash 1017 through their API for our B2B2C app for complex work around building blocks for documents and custom tools. A few months ago we weren't sure which EU provider to use, but since they introduced 3rd party models, added more features (now Responses API etc.) and improved their own model, we are quite happy-
I didn’t know mistral started serving deepseek-flash 4.1! This is awesome. A little more expensive than most providers though. $0.03/$0.007/$1.20 on mistral vs deepseeks own peak pricing of $0.03/$0.006/$1.20 (vs deepseeks off peak pricing of $0.015/$0.003/$0.60).
I prefer using a European provider though so this is actually cheaper than I can find elsewhere.
> but since they introduced 3rd party models, added more features (now Responses API etc.) and improved their own model, we are quite happy-
Yeah, serving GLM is a pretty good play on their side. I know they have been criticized for it ("so, you're just reselling GLM...") but it seems practical as in it helps EU companies use it.
I have absolutely no problem with them hosting and selling GLM as an offering, it just makes sense for them to do this as an option. As a long time subscriber however, I don't like at all that they have started using GLM as the default model in the Vibe app (formerly Le Chat), with seemingly no way to switch to Mistral's own model. I'm paying a monthly subscription to Mistral explicitly to use a European tool in my daily non technical LLM needs. This feels off and I'm reconsidering my subscription. If all they are giving me is a hosted Chinese model, I can probably get that cheaper elsewhere.
How does it help EU companies?
So they can use GLM from a trusted provider, that is highly committed to respect local laws and regulations.
Just think about a defense contractor. Choosing trustworthy vendors is crucial to them. They can't just use a random provider from Open Router. They need to vet and certify their vendors. If they already have Mistral on the list of approved vendors, they can now just switch to the most recent open weight LLM if Mistral starts serving it.
They can use the model and the data and requests all stay in the EU region. As opposed to sending to Anthropic, Microsoft or Google. Granted, those companies can assert that data will stay in the EU region too, but they'd have to be believed, which, some may find tricky lately.
Thanks to the CLOUD act, its pretty irrelevant where the data is as long as its owned by a US entity.
The government can just force release, even if it's on European servers.
In this case it's a EU company serving either an EU built model or a Chinese model. For the Chinese models they are not forwarding the requests to China, the model is still running in EU.
And what if it’s Chinese servers? Like, iCloud stuff but for Chinese nationals in China?
GCBD operates the iCloud China service with Apple, and I imagine Apple, Inc and its associated LEA portal/systems does not have access (otherwise there's no chance China would let iCloud China be a thing).
This is also where the words of law and pragmatic reality intercede.
But Mistral is French.
I read as GP agreeing with GGP:
> ... As opposed to sending to Anthropic, Microsoft or Google. Granted, those companies can assert that data will stay in the EU region too, but they'd have to be believed, which, some may find tricky lately
CLOUD Act -> "but they'd have to be believed"
From the announcement:
Sovereignty does not always require self-hosting; sometimes it just requires deployments that meet your control requirements. For organizations that prefer a managed service, Mistral Large 4 is available through Microsoft Foundry, with private deployment options for Azure developers.
Yes, that is an option, but not the only option. Mistral also provides an api that is hosted by an EU company as far as I understand.
There's many EU companies that want to have a contractual relationship with only another EU company and be absolutely assured that the models, the contents of the KV cache, any logging, all access control/credential systems, billing platform, etc are all hosted on EU-company owned hardware located in an EU jurisdiction.
There is a similar thing happening now on a smaller scale for Canadian companies that want to migrate off USA-based platforms for all sorts of SaaS and reasons.
Another vote here - moving a lot of our stuff over to Mistral. Very much happier keeping data in Europe rather than leeching it all over the US. Plus, the orange lunatic.
Still waiting for Mistral to serve DS 4.1 with decent caching price.