In my last post on Mistral AI, I spoke about Mistral adopting GLM-5.2 as part of their options that they offer to customers but this was unfortunately overshadowed by the headline of 1 GW by 2030. But yes, because EU AI is lagging behind on model performance, Mistral is looking to provide inference services using GLM-5.2 in a broader push to finance itself. By using a Chinese open-weight model, they can retain data, inference, and finance sovereignty while giving up model sovereignty.
This is probably the best option; the adoption of GLM-5.2 itself signals that there isn’t much demand from enterprises and retailers for Mistral’s own AI models, and Mistral AI is also falling behind in quality compared to American and Chinese AI companies. Thus using their inference to provide a better model to finance themselves and encourage AI adoption is the best move.
Of course, geopolitics and technology can never be separated, and so the adoption of Mistral AI highlights how Europe is moving away from America’s tech stack. As a signatory of Pax Silica, the adoption of Chinese models by Mistral might trigger retaliation from US. Then there’s also the continued corporate entanglement with China despite the EU commission’s own desire to reduce dependence on China. Deepened exposure to Chinese technology and supply chains might undermine the efforts of Brussels to combat Beijing on trade.
I’d also like to add, as my personal opinion, this will depend on the willingness of Beijing to restrict its own models. But as was seen near Kimi K3’s release at WAIC, the CCP at this moment is rather ambivalent on whether they will pursue a policy of restriction. Indeed, a more restrictive policy comes into conflict with their lack of own inference for their models, which is why they’ve been kept open-weight thus far.
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In my last post on Mistral AI, I spoke about Mistral adopting GLM-5.2 as part of their options that they offer to customers but this was unfortunately overshadowed by the headline of 1 GW by 2030. But yes, because EU AI is lagging behind on model performance, Mistral is looking to provide inference services using GLM-5.2 in a broader push to finance itself. By using a Chinese open-weight model, they can retain data, inference, and finance sovereignty while giving up model sovereignty.
This is probably the best option; the adoption of GLM-5.2 itself signals that there isn’t much demand from enterprises and retailers for Mistral’s own AI models, and Mistral AI is also falling behind in quality compared to American and Chinese AI companies. Thus using their inference to provide a better model to finance themselves and encourage AI adoption is the best move.
Of course, geopolitics and technology can never be separated, and so the adoption of Mistral AI highlights how Europe is moving away from America’s tech stack. As a signatory of Pax Silica, the adoption of Chinese models by Mistral might trigger retaliation from US. Then there’s also the continued corporate entanglement with China despite the EU commission’s own desire to reduce dependence on China. Deepened exposure to Chinese technology and supply chains might undermine the efforts of Brussels to combat Beijing on trade.
I’d also like to add, as my personal opinion, this will depend on the willingness of Beijing to restrict its own models. But as was seen near Kimi K3’s release at WAIC, the CCP at this moment is rather ambivalent on whether they will pursue a policy of restriction. Indeed, a more restrictive policy comes into conflict with their lack of own inference for their models, which is why they’ve been kept open-weight thus far.