French Startup Mistral AI Users, Fundraised, Revenue, And Statistics

Mistral AI was founded as an artificial intelligence startup in April 2023.

In its early days, the company faced the challenges of developing cutting-edge AI models, attracting top talent, and scaling its infrastructure. 

The founders, Arthur Mensch, Guillaume Lample, and Timothée Lacroix, knew that building a successful European AI company would be an uphill battle.

Today, just 11 months later, Mistral AI is valued at $2 billion and has over 1 million downloads of its open-source models.

From funding rounds to model performance benchmarks, here's a breakdown of everything you'll discover in this comprehensive article on Mistral AI’s meteoric rise:

• Mistral AI Company Overview

• Mistral AI Funding and Valuation 

• Mistral AI Model Releases and Performance 

• Mistral AI User Growth and Adoption 

• Mistral AI Partnerships and Ecosystem 

• Mistral AI Team and Hiring 

• Industry Impact and Future Outlook 

Key Mistral AI Statistics And Company Overview

• Mistral AI’s open-source models have been downloaded over 1 million times to date.

• Founded in April 2023, Mistral AI rapidly achieved a $2 billion valuation within 8 months , raising over $550 million to date through seed, Series A, and strategic investments

• Mistral AI’s chatbot, Le Chat , reportedly acquired 1 million users in the first week of its beta launch in February 2024.

• Mistral AI has grown from a handful of employees at its founding to over 500 employees worldwide as of March 2024 .

Mistral AI Funding and Valuation

Mistral AI’s meteoric rise has been propelled by substantial investments from premier venture capital firms and tech industry leaders . 

Two months after its launch, in June 2023 , Lightspeed Venture Partners led an impressive $113 million seed round in which notable investors like Bpifrance, Xavier Niel, Headline, and Index Ventures participated . 

This early investment valued the nascent startup at $260 million . Just six months later, in December 2023, Mistral AI achieved unicorn status with a staggering €450 million ($415 million value at the time) Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz . 

This round saw participation from a lot of prominent investors, including Bpifrance, Salesforce Ventures, Databricks Ventures, and Snowflake Ventures . The Series A investment catapulted Mistral AI's valuation to an impressive $2 billion .

In February 2024 , Microsoft further validated Mistral AI’s potential with a $16 million strategic investment as part of a multi-year partnership between the two companies. This investment brought Mistral AI’s total funding to date to over $550 million , a remarkable achievement for a company that was founded less than a year ago.

While Mistral AI's total funding is impressive, it is important to note that some other prominent AI companies have raised even larger sums. 

For example, OpenAI, backed by Microsoft, has an estimated total funding of $11.3 billion , while Anthropic has raised $1.4 billion to date. Stability AI and Cerebras Systems have also seen significant investments, with total funding of $1 billion and $720 million , respectively.

But Mistral AI's ability to attract over half a billion dollars in funding within just 11 months of its founding is a testament to the immense potential and market demand for its open-source AI technologies and research initiatives.

Mistral AI Model Releases and Performance

Modern AI models from Mistral AI, which have outperformed industry leaders in performance, are what make the company successful.

The company has released two open-source models and three commercial models to date , each catering to diverse use cases and showcasing competitive capabilities.

Open-Source Models

• Mistral 7B (released September 2023 )

  • 7.3 billion parameters.

  • Outperformed Meta's LLaMA 13B on multiple benchmarks, despite being 44% smaller.

  • Widely adopted by the AI community, with 500,000+ downloads in the first month of release.

• Mixtral 8x7B (released December 2023 )

  • 46.7 billion parameters.

  • Employs a mixture-of-experts architecture for improved parameter efficiency.

  • Surpassed OpenAI's GPT-3.5 on the MMLU benchmark.

  • Explosive adoption, with 500,000+ downloads in the first 2 weeks of release and 1 million+ total downloads as of March 2024

Commercial Models (API only)

• Mistral Large (released February 2024 )

  • Performance approaching OpenAI's GPT-4 on several benchmarks

  • Fluent in 5 languages : English, French, German, Spanish, and Italian

  • Outperforms Mistral Medium and Mistral Small across various benchmarks:

    • MMLU : 81.2% (Mistral Large) vs. 75.3% (Mistral Medium) and 72.2% (Mistral Small)

    • Hellaswag (10-shot) : 89.2% vs. 88.0% and 86.9%

    • Winograde (5-shot) : 86.7% vs. 88% and 84.7%

    • Arc Challenge (25-shot) : 94.0% vs. 89.9% and 86.9%

    • TriviaQA (5-shot) : 82.7% vs. 81.1% and 79.5%

  • Superior multilingual performance compared to other Mistral models:

    • French MMLU : 79.3% (Mistral Large) vs. 70.9% (Mistral Medium) and 68.4% (Mistral Small)

    • German MMLU : 78.2% vs. 71.5% and 70.1%

    • Spanish MMLU : 79.7% vs. 72.5% and 69.7%

    • Italian MMLU : 78.9% vs. 70.9% and 69.5%

• Mistral Medium

  • Balanced performance and capability for intermediate tasks

  • Outperforms Mistral Small on various benchmarks

• Mistral Small

  • Cost-effective solution for simple, high-volume tasks

  • Maintains competitive performance on basic benchmarks

These models have proven to be highly competitive with offerings from industry giants. Mistral 7B, with 7.3 billion parameters , outperformed Meta's LLaMA 13B on various benchmarks despite being nearly half the size.

Mixtral 8x7B, boasting 46.7 billion parameters and a mixture-of-experts architecture, surpassed OpenAI's GPT-3.5 on the MMLU benchmark while being more parameter-efficient.

Mistral Large, the flagship commercial model, has garnered significant attention for its performance, approaching that of OpenAI's GPT-4 while being fluent in five languages.

It consistently outperforms Mistral Medium and Mistral Small across most benchmarks, showcasing its superior reasoning capabilities and multilingual prowess.

Mistral AI User Growth and Adoption

Mistral AI has experienced rapid user growth and adoption, fueled by the popularity of its cutting-edge AI models and strategic partnerships. 

The company's open-source models, Mistral 7B, and Mixtral 8x7B, have surpassed 1 million total downloads as of March 2024 , with Mistral 7B achieving 500,000+ downloads in its first month of release (September 2023 ) and Mixtral 8x7B reaching 500,000+ downloads in just two weeks after its launch in December 2023 .

In February 2024, Mistral AI launched the beta version of its chatbot, Le Chat, which acquired an impressive 1 million users in its first week. 

This initial traction is very similar to the rapid expansion of OpenAI's ChatGPT, which gained 1 million users in just 5 days and 100 million monthly active users in just 2 months.

Given the promising start, Mistral AI has the potential for similar growth as it continues to refine Le Chat and expand access to more users.

Mistral AI's strategic partnership with Microsoft, announced in February 2024 , is set to play a significant role in the company's global expansion. As part of the collaboration, Mistral AI's large language models (LLMs) will be made available on Microsoft's Azure cloud platform , making it the second company after OpenAI to host its LLMs on Azure. 

This partnership is expected to bolster Mistral AI's access to new customers and further drive the adoption of its technologies, particularly as it rolls out "Le Chat" to a wider audience.

Mistral AI Partnerships and Ecosystem

Mistral AI has rapidly built a robust network of partnerships with major tech companies, accelerating the adoption and reach of its AI technologies:

• Microsoft Partnership and Integration

  • Mistral AI's models will be integrated into Microsoft's Azure AI platform, making it the second company after OpenAI to have its large language models (LLMs) available on Azure.

  • Microsoft has entered into a multi-year partnership with Mistral AI, announced in February 2024.

  • This collaboration is expected to drive the adoption of Mistral AI's technology by enterprises worldwide, given Microsoft's extensive global reach and customer base.

  • As part of the partnership, Microsoft will also dedicate funds to joint research and development initiatives, including the creation of AI models for public sector services in Europe .

• Amazon Bedrock AI Integration

  • Amazon has integrated Mistral AI's models into its Bedrock AI service, providing developers with easy access to Mistral AI's powerful tools within Amazon's cloud ecosystem .

  • This integration expands the reach of Mistral AI's technology to Amazon's vast user base , which includes over 1 million active customers across 190 countries .

  • By making its models available on Bedrock AI, Mistral AI can tap into the growing demand for AI solutions among Amazon's diverse customer base, ranging from startups to large enterprises .

• Databricks Partnership

  • Databricks, a leading enterprise AI platform with over 7,000 customers worldwide , has partnered with Mistral AI to integrate its models into its offering.

  • This partnership further expands the reach of Mistral AI's technology in the corporate world, as Databricks serves a wide range of industries, including financial services, healthcare, retail, and manufacturing .

  • The integration of Mistral AI's models into Databricks' platform enables enterprises to leverage advanced AI capabilities within their existing data infrastructure, streamlining the adoption process .

• Anthropic Collaboration on AI Safety Research

  • Mistral AI is collaborating with Anthropic, a prominent AI startup that has raised over $1 billion in funding , on open-source AI safety research.

  • This partnership underscores Mistral AI's commitment to developing responsible and ethical AI systems , a valuable consideration as the company's technology gains wider adoption.

  • By working with Anthropic, Mistral AI can leverage the expertise and resources of both companies to advance the field of AI safety and ensure the development of robust, trustworthy AI solutions.

Mistral AI Team and Hiring

A group of seasoned AI researchers and business leaders lead Mistral AI's talented and rapidly expanding team, which is what makes it successful:

• Founders and Executive Team

  • Arthur Mensch (CEO) : Former researcher at Google DeepMind , co-author of the influential Chinchilla paper on scaling laws for large language models (LLMs).

  • Guillaume Lample (CTO) : Former researcher at Meta AI, with over a decade of experience in AI research and development.

  • Timothée Lacroix (Chief Scientist) : Former researcher at Meta AI , bringing extensive expertise in natural language processing and machine learning.

  • The executive team includes seasoned professionals with deep expertise in AI, engineering, and business, hailing from top companies like Google, Meta, and Microsoft.

• Employee Growth

  • June 2023 (Seed Round): 50+ employees

  • December 2023 (Series A): 200+ employees

  • March 2024: 500+ employees (reported)

  • Headcount has grown by 900% in just 9 months , from June 2023 to March 2024.

• Key Hiring Areas and Open Roles

  • AI Researchers : Mistral AI is actively seeking top AI researchers to further advance its cutting-edge models and technologies.

  • Engineers : The company is hiring software engineers, machine learning engineers, and infrastructure experts to support its rapid growth and scale its platform.

  • Product Managers : Mistral AI is expanding its product management team to drive the development and launch of new AI products and features.

  • Open roles span various levels of seniority, from entry-level positions to senior leadership roles .

• Talent Base and Global Expansion

  • France and Europe : Mistral AI has a strong talent base in France and Europe, leveraging the region’s world-class AI research institutions and vibrant startup ecosystem. 

  • Notable AI research centers in Europe include INRIA (France), Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (Germany), and the University of Cambridge (UK). 

  • Global Expansion: As Mistral AI expands its global footprint, the company is actively hiring for roles in key tech hubs and remote positions.

    • London : Mistral AI is building a strong presence in London, one of Europe's leading tech hubs, to tap into the city's diverse talent pool and proximity to key markets.

    • San Francisco : The company is also hiring in San Francisco, positioning itself close to the heart of the global AI industry and fostering collaboration with other leading AI companies and researchers.

    • Remote Positions : Mistral AI offers remote work opportunities, enabling the company to attract top talent from around the world and build a diverse, distributed team.

Industry Impact and Future Outlook

Looking ahead, Mistral AI is poised for continued growth and impact. The global AI market is projected to reach $1.6 trillion by 2030 . That presents a significant opportunity for the company as it expands its offerings and market presence. Mistral AI plans to train models with up to 200 billion parameters in 2024 , further advancing the AI’s capabilities.

By 2025 , Mistral AI aims to have trillion-scale models that close the accuracy gap to human baselines across the majority of natural language processing (NLP) subtasks. The company also expects to generate $15 billion in revenue from productivity gains by enterprises, professional services, and digital agencies.

In 2026 , Mistral AI plans to introduce unsupervised pretraining techniques that significantly enhance data efficiency. This means more improvement in the performance and scalability of its models. By 2027 , the company aims to achieve ubiquitous real-time language comprehension capability surpassing average human proficiency.

As generative AI becomes more widespread, Mistral AI is well-positioned to capture a significant share of the $60 billion total addressable market expected by 2030 . The company’s focus on open-source innovation, strategic partnerships, and commitment to developing responsible AI systems sets it apart as a leader in shaping the future of AI.

Mistral AI’s approach to AI democratization is expected to enable knowledge diffusion beyond elite circles, spur sector disruption, and foster novel applications. 

However, the company must navigate potential ethical and societal challenges , such as the risk of filter bubbles, misinformation propagation, and manipulative messaging .

Conclusion

Hopefully, this post shed some light on some of Mistral AI’s impressive growth, user adoption, fundraising, and model performance.

We’ll be dynamically updating this piece as new developments about Mistral AI emerge to keep you updated.

And in case you’re interested in learning more about French startups, or French culture, check out our French language classes. 

Sources:

1. Spy Newsletter

2. Mistral AI introduces a new large language model on its platform

3. DealRoom

4. WikiPedia

5. Mistral AI

6. 10 Facts About Mistral AI

7. Mistral AI 7b Statistics

8. Mistral EU regulation

9. https://aws.amazon.com/bedrock/mistral/

10. Mistral AI is better than ChatGPT

11. Mistral vs Llama 3

12. Mistral 7b statistics