Industry
Mistral AI: Europe's Open-Weight Counterweight
Mistral AI is the European champion of the generative AI race, founded in Paris by former DeepMind and Meta researchers. Philosophically opposed to the "black box" approach of OpenAI and Anthropic, Mistral champions "open-weight" models, releasing high-performance, efficient models that can be run locally. In less than a year, they achieved a multi-billion dollar valuation and became the primary alternative to US-centric AI dominance.