2024-03-24 04:44:00
Hundreds of artificial intelligence professionals crowd into a large, crowded conference room at the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose. They came to see one of their industry’s UFOs. On stage, Arthur Mensch presents his startup, Mistral AI, in fluent English where his slight French accent stands out. A true star of the French ecosystem, the 31-year-old leader has an ambitious project. From Paris, he intends to compete with OpenAI (the creator of ChatGPT), Google and Meta in the development of the best AI models. His speech attracted all the more attention as the French start-up had not yet appeared publicly in Silicon Valley.
For its premiere, Mistral is taking advantage of a choice display: the GTC, the big annual event for Nvidia, the essential seller of AI processors valued at more than 2,000 billion dollars. A highly anticipated event, described as the “Woodstock of AI” by a Bank of America analyst, which returned in a physical format for the first time since 2019.
HAS As soon as he got off stage, Arthur Mensch was escorted by a crowd of around twenty people, eager to make a first contact or get some advice. The entrepreneur who worked for Google will end his crowd bath with a selfie session with a few fans, before excusing himself to go on a meeting. “ They are not yet as well known as OpenAI, but they are clearly identified in the first group of competitors », Slips Antonio Di Francesco, a Californian developer who hoped to greet the director of Mistral. “ They are intriguing. The industry is moving towards the use of smaller and more efficient AI models, and they can be considered pioneers in the subject », adds an employee of one of the American technology giants, who came to attend the presentation.
Show of force
In September 2023, barely three months after its creation, the French startup published its first AI model, Mistral 7B. A small model, which aimed not to overturn the market, but to expose the potential of the company. Thanks to its free open source distribution, all AI experts were able to test it and use it for their own projects.
They quickly realized that they were witnessing a demonstration of force: in record time, Mistral had succeeded in creating a new reference model, better than its equivalent at Meta. All this, with much less human and material resources. “ We quickly heard about them internally, thanks to their place in the performance rankings. », Says a French employee of Nvidia, whose testimony resonates with the many visitors to the small stand of the French startup.
The phenomenon has even gone around the world. “ It’s a company that inspires in Japan », explains Ryo Yamada, correspondent for the financial newspaper Nikkei. « We are used to seeing the United States systematically dominate tech, and here, suddenly, a French company manages to rise to their level! »
Conquering the global market
For its first official excursion into the territory of its competitors, Mistral came in force. The two co-founders of Arthur Mensch, Timothée Lacroix and Guillaume Lample, are there, accompanied by a handful of the company’s 35 employees. In addition to their presentations, the leaders have a series of business meetings. “ OpenAI has spent over a year educating the US market. They explained to companies how generative AI worked and what value could be derived from it. Thanks to their evangelization work, we do not waste time on basic explanations », notes the CTO of Mistral, Guillaume Lample.
At the beginning of the month, the French company launched its commercial offer, based around a new AI model called Mistral Large, capable of competing with the performance of industry benchmarks such as OpenAI’s famous GPT-4. To mark the occasion, it even released an equivalent of ChatGPT, cleverly named “Le Chat”.
But this time, no open source distribution. If companies want to use Mistral Large, they need to get their hands on it. Either by contacting the startup directly, or through Microsoft Azure. The United States is a mandatory crossing point for the young growth, and the agreement with the tech giant offers them a royal road to business.
Recruit the best talents
Once the GTC is over, the Mistral team will head to San Francisco to organize a hackathon over the weekend. The French startup plans to present its models to local artificial intelligence specialists, then give them computing resources to conduct live experiments. The challenges of the event are numerous: popularizing their models, introducing themselves to American developers or even exposing a range of use cases. “ The main interest of the hackathon is to identify talents », specifies however to La Tribune Sunday Guillaume Lample. « We don’t necessarily need a lot of profiles, but we need to find the best ones. »
The French darling did not wait for its visit to the bay to go international. Five employees based in the United States have already joined them. “ We bring them to France for three months for our integration program, and then they leave again. », explains our interlocutor. Thanks to the more than 500 million euros raised since its creation, Mistral can align itself with the extremely high salary conditions imposed by competition from the Silicon Valley giants.
But money is only one lever among others to attract talent. Access to computing power, the technical expertise of the teams and even the reputation of the company also weigh in the balance. To be as considered as its competitors, Mistral still has some adjustments to make. “ Here, we are still called ‘French OpenAI, but we don’t want that image. Even if our premises are in Paris, we are above all a company with international ambition and we intend to be considered as such. » Passed message.
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