Open Source start-up Mistral becomes leader in European artificial intelligence.
Mistral, the open-source artificial intelligence provider has closed its much anticipated initial round of funding. Taking total investments to around €450 million for the French company. Mistral provides open-source software to power chat bots and AI solutions. The young start-up has been closely watched by leading American investors throughout this funding drive.
The end of this investment window sees the start-up valued at $2 Billion, as reported via Bloomberg.
Silicon Valley investors leading the charge
Andreessen Horowitz, Nvidia, and Salesforce have all set out funding commitments in Mistral’s initial Series A round of fundraising.
Andreessen Horowitz, or a16z, is responsible for a robust portfolio of up to $35 Billion. The venture capital giant has interests across AI, bio + healthcare, crypto, fintech, and gaming.
The company announced via its website, “we’re thrilled to announce our Series A investment in Mistral.”
”Mistral is dedicated to the mission of bringing open-source AI models to the world. We believe they are picking up where other AI labs and big companies have left off, fostering open research, open models, and open collaboration in the AI community.”
Nvidia is one of the leading global microchip producers and Salesforce is an established American software provider. Nvidia recently published a paper in October comparing techniques for handling long context in large language models (LLMs) — the key algorithms behind today’s conversational AI.
Europe becoming an established presence in all things AI
Mistral was founded in May 2023 and has already seen exponential investment and growth. The only other company with a comparative investment this year is Germany’s Aleph Alpha which, as reported by CNBC. received around €500 million in November, providing Europe with two heavily backed AI start-up rivals in 2023.
European Union rules on AI Governance
The European Union’s 27 member states agreed to the Artificial Intelligence act, marking a significant milestone in the development and use of AI solutions. Key talking points included the use of facial recognition software and the policies and working practices involved in deploying software ethically.
Europe is the first continent to set out clear rules for AI governance and copyright protection, but only time will tell if it will set a precedent in the future of AI software development and use.
Image Credit: David McBee, Pexels
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