Mistral AI Faces off with ChatGPT
The French startup is launching a flagship LLM and a GenAI-led chatbot called Le Chat
If you thought OpenAI had won the race for the best LLM and GenAI with ChatGPT4, think again. A Paris-based AI startup Mistral AI is launching an alternative large language model called Mistral Large that is designed to take on the acknowledged market leaders. What’s more, Microsoft too has backed the venture with a long-term deal.
Called Mistral Large, the model is supposed to have reasoning capabilities capable of rivaling both ChatGPT4 and Claude 2. Additionally, the startup is also launching its alternative to ChatGPT named imaginatively as Le Chat that is currently available in beta version. On its part, Microsoft, which invested $13 billion OpenAI, announced a deal with Mistral AI.
“Today, we are announcing a multi-year partnership between Microsoft and Mistral AI, a recognized leader in generative artificial intelligence. Both companies are fueled by a steadfast dedication to innovation and practical applications, bridging the gap between pioneering research and real-world solutions,” Microsoft said in a statement.
What’s Mistral AI been up to till date?
Just so that we bring you up to speed, Mistral AI is better known for its capitalization efforts, having raised obscene amounts within a very short timeframe. Incorporated in May 2023 by Google’s Deepmind, Meta alumni, the company raised $113 million in seed round and last December received a cheque of $415 million, led by Andreessen Horowitz.
Having positioned itself as an AI company with open source models, Mistral AI released its first model under an open source license. However, its larger models have an uncanny likeness with OpenAI’s business model as the company is now offering Mistral Large via a paid API with usage-based pricing.
One can cough up $8 per million of input tokens and $24 per million of output tokens to query the model. By default it supports context windows of 32K tokens and speaks English, French, Spanish, German and Italian. By comparison, GPT-4 Turbo costs $10 per million input tokens and $30 million of output tokens. Qu’est-ce que tu en dis ChatGPT?
There’s more to Mistral than just that
But there’s more from Mistral AI. The company’s Le Chat is coming soon and anyone can sign up and try it out via their website. Of course, the company forewarns users about possible quirks as it is still in beta stage. For now, access is free and users can choose between three different models – Mistral Small, Mistral Large and Mistral Next – which is a prototype model that is designed to be brief and concise.
What’s interesting is that Le Chat cannot access the web when one uses it. Now the company is also working on launching a paid version for enterprise clients. Remember! We told you that the business models propagated by Mistral AI seems uncannily similar to what OpenAI is doing. Which makes us wonder as to why Microsoft wants to hedge its bets now?
Maybe, Satya Nadella really wants to take over anything and everything that carries a large language model under its hood! For, this partnership is a solid strategy to remain under the radar when it comes to anticompetition scrutiny.
