Microsoft partners with French AI company Mistral and faces EU scrutiny

February 27, 2024: Microsoft Corporation has entered right into a strategic agreement Partnership with Mistral AIa French startup that is taken into account OpenAI’s most important European competitor.

Announced on February 27, 2024, this collaboration is anticipated to deliver the next The latest artificial intelligence models from Mistral for Microsoft Azure customers, thereby increasing the range and accessibility of AI technologies.

Mistral AIwhich is understood for developing algorithmic models much like OpenAI but focused on sharing open source solutions, recently introduced a model called Mistral Large.

This model has unique reasoning abilities and knowledge of 5 languages ​​and represents a big advance within the AI ​​field.

Although Microsoft’s investment in Mistral has not been announced, it represents a robust commitment to supporting a wide range of AI technologies, each proprietary and open source.

This partnership comes as Microsoft faces increasing scrutiny from regulators worldwide as a result of its close ties with OpenAI.

With significant investments totaling roughly $13 billion in OpenAI, Microsoft’s strategy has significantly contributed to OpenAI becoming a big competitor within the technology industry.

However, this has also led to antitrust investigations by the European Union and the United Kingdom that query the independence and competitive practices of those collaborations.

Given these challenges, Microsoft has expressed its challenges “AI access principles” on the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and promised to make AI tools and models widely available to spice up competition.

This is a component of a broader initiative by Microsoft that features a significant €5.6 billion investment in European data centers to support the region’s digital infrastructure.

Founded in early 2023 by former engineers from Google’s DeepMind and Meta Platforms Inc., Mistral has quickly positioned itself as a European contender within the AI ​​space.

A recent funding round in December valued the corporate at around $2 billion, underscoring its rapid growth and potential to challenge U.S. dominance in AI technology.

The European Union’s Executive Commission has announced that it’s closely examining the partnership between Microsoft and Mistral as a part of a broader review of the generative AI market.

This review is meant to be sure that the agreement doesn’t hinder competition and maintains a balanced and progressive AI ecosystem. As regulators closely monitor the event of this partnership, the technology world eagerly awaits the impact of this collaboration on the longer term of artificial intelligence.