alt.hn

7/22/2026 at 9:12:58 AM

Microsoft strikes 'multibillion-dollar' deal with French AI firm Mistral

https://www.france24.com/en/france/20260721-microsoft-strikes-multi-billion-dollar-deal-to-expand-france-ai-firm-mistral

by taubek

7/22/2026 at 12:51:40 PM

AI company -> infrastructure company is the hottest transition these days. Shows clearly that if you're not able to build competitive models then the best return for your investment is to rent out your GPUs to those who are.

by paxys

7/22/2026 at 10:31:54 AM

Who cares. They’ve fallen way behind the Chinese.

by wuue

7/22/2026 at 11:15:33 AM

Europeans who want European sovereign models, most likely.

by satvikpendem

7/22/2026 at 12:24:45 PM

And Redmond Dwellers who want to sell integrated cloud office solutions to Sovereign Europeans, forever.

by bonesss

7/22/2026 at 4:16:13 PM

It's this. Microsoft doesn't care what model they use, they sell an integrated office + AI product, model agnostic. They'll offer whatever models they need to continue to sell their product globally.

As much as Copilot sucks, I think Microsoft has the right idea. Model is a dumb pipe, basically an ISP. The actual value is what's built over top of it, and packaged up nicely for an enterprise to buy off the shelf and be immediately useful. I imagine a future where picking an LLM model is no different from choosing who my internet provider at home is. They all do the same thing with varying levels of reliability, customer service, speed, etc.

by thewebguyd

7/22/2026 at 3:01:30 PM

Are you suggesting that European should use third rate models and accept competitive disadvantage?

by Chyzwar

7/22/2026 at 3:47:26 PM

China was behind the frontier before they suddenly weren't (K3). Just using American models would never have achieved that (not that they could have anyway, but the point still stands).

by zamalek

7/22/2026 at 3:30:53 PM

Are you suggesting that Europeans should continuously use third party models be it American, Chinese or whatever?

by eithed

7/22/2026 at 7:09:52 PM

If they want European models (whether for regulatory or other reasons) then they have to accept it, whether they like it or not, because Mistral is not competitive. Personally I don't believe Europe as a whole can compete, being cutthroat these days is just not in their culture anymore like it is in Silicon Valley in the US and China as a whole.

by satvikpendem

7/22/2026 at 4:18:17 PM

Fallen way behind in what, exactly? Before you answer it might be a good idea to look at what Mistral's core competencies are look at what Chinese models do, and decide if they are even in the same race.

by troyvit

7/22/2026 at 4:22:20 PM

They are irrelevant in the grand scheme of things and they know.

The founders are grifting and trying to secure funding under the guise of sovereignty to protect their market power in Europe.

Nonsense!

by wuue

7/22/2026 at 5:06:46 PM

Oooh I didn't realize there was a grand scheme of things! I thought it was just a bunch of douchy SaSS guys who are burning coal as they feel their way along.

> trying to secure funding under the guise of sovereignty to protect their market power in Europe.

That's kind-of what sovereignty is: protecting European market power from external forces. It sucks that the funding is coming from US oligarchs though.

by troyvit

7/22/2026 at 11:12:31 AM

I wonder if that is what they will leave the world. A operating system into which they shoved all the things they were not.

by 21asdffdsa12

7/22/2026 at 12:18:03 PM

Does this even look like a timing race at this point? Moonshot only really got going this year.

Why couldn’t any well capitalized firm get to a leading position?

by lumost