With Microsoft's support, this French co is gearing up to challenge OpenAI

Mistral has announced a partnership with Microsoft, just like OpenAI and has also launched its own LLM

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With ChatGPT and now Sora, Sam Altman-led OpenAI has disrupted the tech world with the use of artificial intelligence. Its GPT-4 is currently deemed the world's most powerful large language model (LLM). It also has support from one of the biggest tech giants, Microsoft.

Now, a French startup is trying to mount a challenge to OpenAI.

Mistral AI was started by three French former researchers from Google and Meta - Chief Executive Officer Arthur Mensch, Chief Scientist Guillaume Lample and Chief Technology Officer Timothee Lacroix.

On February 26, Mistral AI announced the launch of its new LLM, Mistral-Large. According to a report by The Economist, this LLM is smaller than GPT-4 in terms of the number of parameters it uses, but it rivals OpenAI's model in performance.

Mistral also announced a partnership with Microsoft, where the Redmond-based company will make the French startup's artificial intelligence models available through its Azure cloud computing platform. Microsoft described Mistral AI as "an innovator and trailblazer".

Mistral also released a public test version of its own chatbot, called Le Chat.

Mistral made a big splash by attracting big amounts of investor funding to give it a multibillion-dollar valuation just months after it was founded last spring. Its open-source approach to developing AI means it publicly releases key components of its models, in contrast to companies such as OpenAI, which closely guard them.

It has attracted investments from big investors, including leading Silicon Valley venture capitalists such as Andreessen Horowitz and General Catalyst, as well as Eric Schmidt, a former chief executive of Google.

According to The Economist, Mistral AI's success now depends on a number of factors. First is whether it will be able to generate meaningful revenue. Second is how the world will regulate open-source models. And the third is how it will stand against the next model revealed by OpenAI.