Microsoft Strikes Deal With France’s Mistral, OpenAI Rival

  • Company president cites efforts to spur competition in AI
  • Microsoft ties to OpenAI subject of European Union, UK probes

The Mistral AI website.

Photographer: Gabby Jones/Bloomberg
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Microsoft Corp., under mounting political scrutiny globally for its deep ties to OpenAI, has cut a deal with the startup’s primary competition in Europe.

On Monday, the French company Mistral AI announced a “strategic partnership” with Microsoft that includes making the startup’s latest artificial intelligence models available to customers of Microsoft’s Azure cloud. Mistral develops algorithmic models similar to those from OpenAI used for chatbots and other AI services, but Mistral models are open-source and shared openly.