Launched in May 2023, Mistral AI has swiftly secured its position as a European frontrunner in the realm of artificial intelligence. How can we account for such rapid success? Uncover the services and capabilities that Mistral AI brings to the table.
What is Mistral AI?
Mistral AI is a French venture embarking on the development of innovative generative artificial intelligence models. Founded by Arthur Mensch, who boasts a Google pedigree, alongside Guillaume Lample and Timothée Lacroix, both veterans of Meta, this triumvirate of tech-savvy thirty-somethings has set an ambitious objective: to democratize AI utilization across the developer and business spectra.
Their goal can be confidently labeled as achieved. In less than a year’s operation, the platform’s offerings are already being leveraged by major conglomerates, such as Orange, CMA CGM, BNP Paribas, to name a few. This is in addition to its adoption by burgeoning entities within the AI cosmos, including Hugging Face, Mongo DB, Cloudflare, OctoAI, among others.
In light of its triumphs, the firm now boasts a valuation of 2 billion dollars, a figure that’s only expected to soar. The CEO of Mistral AI, Arthur Mensch, disclosed a collaboration with Microsoft. The tech titan has earmarked a 16 million euro investment for the startup, aimed at democratizing access to its artificial intelligence models through the Azure Cloud Computing platform.
Who benefits from Mistral AI?
Developers
Mistral AI extends to developers a trio of generative AI models, each with its unique strengths:
- Mistral 7B: the inaugural model of the platform. Despite being the most compact, it packs a punch for diverse applications, including experimentation, customization, and rapid iteration.
- Mixtral 8x7B: a premium Sparse Mixture of Experts (SMoE) model that is structured with open architecture.
- Mixtral 8x22B: the titan of Mistral AI’s roster, equipped with built-in function calling, function calls, a json mode, and an expansive 64k context window.
Embraced as open source under the Apache 2.0 license, these models are available for seamless integration into development ecosystems or for use directly via the platform. Catering to developers, it facilitates the swift design and deployment of applications employing the aforementioned models.
Businesses
Companies can craft bespoke AI applications leveraging Mistral AI’s tiered commercial models.
- Mistral Small: enabled for executing straightforward tasks like classification, customer support, or content creation.
- Mistral Large: this model excels in managing intricate operations, necessitating extensive logical capabilities or deep specialization (e.g., synthetic content generation, code production, RAG, or agent-based systems).
- Mistral Embed: it transforms textual input into 1024-dimensional numerical vector embeddings.
With their cutting-edge functionalities, these models empower businesses to amplify productivity and enhance operational efficacy.
In February 2024, the startup also unveiled “Le Chat”. While it takes on ChatGPT, it specializes in “programming and web development,” setting it apart in the conversational assistant space.
What distinguishes Mistral AI in its features?
Mistral AI’s ascendancy in the AI landscape is underpinned by its advanced functionalities, which comprise:
- Text generation: akin to leading AI models, Mistral AI has a command of natural language. It can interpret instructions in English, French, or other languages and produce textual output accordingly.
- Embeddings: these vector representations encapsulate the semantic essence of paragraphs, a cornerstone for executing a plethora of NLP (natural language processing) tasks.
- Function calls: this feature enables Mistral AI models to engage with external tools, particularly through APIs, thereby streamlining the development of applications tailored to specific user scenarios and challenges.
- JSON mode: it offers users the flexibility to specify the response format to trigger JSON mode.
- Safeguards: Mistral AI has instituted measures to curtail the frequent mishaps and biases characteristic of artificial intelligences. These can be activated via a boolean safe_prompt indicator.
Fully harness the capabilities of Mistral AI with DataScientest
Mistral AI, though in its nascent stages, is on a promising trajectory. It’s not only making waves in France but is steadily emerging as a formidable contender in the European AI domain, directly competing with platforms like ChatGPT.
All this underscores the importance of mastering its models through structured learning. At DataScientest, you’ll acquire the skills necessary to develop web or mobile applications powered by artificial intelligence.
