Microsoft has partnered with French AI business Mistral in a multiyear deal to commercialise its new language models.
Mistral's open and commercial language models will now be accessible on Microsoft's Azure AI platform. Microsoft's partnership with Mistral, which has existed for ten months but is valued at around $2.1 billion, intends to prioritise the advancement and implementation of next-generation large language models.
It is Microsoft's second major AI partnership after OpenAI, which was the first company to offer a commercial language model on Azure and in which Microsoft has invested around $13 billion over the past four years.
Eric Boyd, Corporate Vice President of Azure AI Platform at Microsoft, wrote in a blog post accompanying the news:
Today, we are announcing a multi-year partnership between Microsoft and Mistral AI, a recognized leader in generative artificial intelligence. Both companies are fueled by a steadfast dedication to innovation and practical applications, bridging the gap between pioneering research and real-world solutions."
Boyd highlighted Mistral's emphasis on open-source community development, but its Microsoft partnership will see the AI startup explore new commercial opportunities, be granted access to fresh global markets, and "foster ongoing research collaboration".
"We are thrilled to embark on this partnership with Microsoft," said Arthur Mensch, CEO at Mistral. "With Azure’s cutting-edge AI infrastructure, we are reaching a new milestone in our expansion, propelling our innovative research and practical applications to new customers everywhere. Together, we are committed to driving impactful progress in the AI industry and delivering unparalleled value to our customers and partners globally."
Additionally, Mistral announced its Mistral Large AI model this week, with ambitions to seriously compete with OpenAI’s GPT-4 LLM. However, Mistral Large won’t be open source. Mistral Large can be accessed either through Mistral's own infrastructure or Azure AI Studio and Azure Machine Learning.
The Financial Times also reported that Microsoft will take a minor stake in Mistral.
More Specifics On the Microsoft and Mistral Partnership
The first key area Boyd cites where the partnership will focus is supercomputing infrastructure. Microsoft aims to provide Mistral with Azure AI supercomputing infrastructure, ensuring elite performance and scalability for AI training and inference workloads, particularly for Mistral AI's flagship models.
The second key area is "Scale to market". Microsoft and Mistral AI will offer Mistral AI's premium models through Models as a Service (MaaS) in Azure AI Studio and Azure Machine Learning model catalogue. This broadens the catalogue beyond OpenAI and will now feature myriad open-source and commercial options.
