Mistral CEO calls DeepSeek’s success a win for the open-source ecosystem

Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch has waded into the discussions surrounding the Chinese artificial intelligence company DeepSeek. The Chinese AI firm burst into the spotlight weeks ago after it released its DeepSeek-R1 AI model. Since that period, the company has enjoyed encomiums from most players in the AI industry.

With the DeepSeek model, like most models, being open-source, the Mistral CEO sees a remarkable resemblance between both companies. Since its launch in 2023, the Paris-based AI firm has always advocated for open-source.

In his interview with Business Insider, the Mistral CEO mentioned that he views DeepSeek as the Mistral of China. He also added that he sees the company’s feat as a great moment for open-source models. “We think that this is a great moment for open-source models, and companies like this — Mistral and DeepSeek — have participated in that and built on top of each other,” he said.

Mistral CEO highlights the benefits of open-source models

Mistral’s large language models (LLMs) are open-weight, just like DeepSeek’s, meaning that they share the same model parameters as opposed to the full codebase. Mensch is one of the executives in the AI industry who believes in the benefits of running an open-source system. According to the Mistral CEO, some of its benefits include faster development cycles and the elimination of bottlenecks like licensing fees.

Mensch mentioned that he has always held the notion that open-source is better because that way, it makes things efficient. “We’ve always been believers in open-source prevailing because of the flywheel, because of everybody building on top of each other, because it just makes things more efficient,” Mensch said.

Investors in the AI industry were taken aback after the release of the DeepSeek R1 model, which the company claimed could match the performance of models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, but was created with a fraction of the cost. The investors questioned the need for large-scale AI investments if a company could get things done with just a fraction of the cost.

In addition, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman mentioned in an AMA this month that he was “on the wrong side of history”, talking about his stance regarding open-source AI. Altman added that the company will need to go back and think about another strategy instead of its closed-source approach, which ensures that its code is not open to the general public.

Mensch discusses efficiency amid IPO plans

In his statement, Mensch mentioned that Mistral, which has been viewed as OpenAI’s biggest competitor in Europe, has always chosen efficiency. He added that it has been all-around efficiency, including the financial aspect. Mistral remains Europe’s most capitalized AI firm, seeing about $1 billion in funding from firms like Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst, and Lightspeed.

He added that it doesn’t require a lot of money before a company adopts a technology and adapts it to its use cases. He noted that Mistral has the needed capital, but frowned upon excessive spending. “We’re a very well-capitalized company, but we’re not spending hundreds of billions,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Mistral CEO mentioned that the company is looking to expand its capabilities in agentic AI, a software that can be used to perform tasks autonomously. Mensch added that the company is planning to achieve the feat through the use of Le Chat, a revamped version of an app that was launched last week.

“Le Chat is a place where you can build your agents, and you should see this as a place where every employee and consumer can create automation and spawn agents,” Mensch said. The best aspect of AI agents is that non-developers can also use them,” he added.

The AI firm is also pushing forward with its plans to reduce dependence on Big Tech, announcing that it will pool billions into building its data center before the Paris Action Summit this week. “It’s a choice we are making to have control over the whole value chain, from the machine to the software,” Mensch told TFI.

Mistral is also moving ahead with plans to expand outside France, moving to the United States where it is seeing a huge commercial attention. The company has also opened an office in Singapore, as it continues to enjoy patronage from users in Southeast Asia. While Mensch mentioned that the firm plans to go public, he noted that there is no immediate action to achieve that.

“I said that we were an independent company, and as a successful independent company, the natural path would obviously be IPO long term — but this obviously doesn’t mean that we’re preparing anything for an IPO for now,” Mensch added.

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