Arthur Mensch

The CEO and co-founder of French unicorn Mistral AI, Arthur Mensch, says he can build cutting-edge models while spending less money and being more open than his Silicon Valley counterparts. His company, named after the Mediterranean wind known for its speed and persistence, has quickly become Europe’s leading AI contender. Since its launch in 2023, Mistral has crossed a reported $6 billion valuation, struck a $16 million deal that gives a minority stake in the company to Microsoft, and partnered with French bank BNP Paribas. The Microsoft deal—which involves Mistral making its models available to Microsoft’s customers in exchange for access to the tech giant’s computational resources—has prompted scrutiny from E.U. lawmakers that it could breach competition rules. But Mensch says Microsoft is just one of four cloud providers the company uses. He has spoken out about other regulation efforts, such as the E.U. AI Act, arguing that such efforts should focus less on general-purpose AI models like Mistral’s and more on regulating how those models are used by others.

Mensch left Google DeepMind in May 2023 to launch Mistral with two former engineering school friends who had been working at Meta. The company has a small but highly specialized team. Mensch told TIME in May that the startup’s focus on releasing large open source models has allowed it to attract roughly 10% of France’s experts in language model development, including top talent from Big Tech competitors.

*Disclosure: Investors in Mistral AI include Salesforce, where TIME co-chair and owner Marc Benioff is CEO.