France’s AI champion
Mistral AI is a French political darling, with French President Emmanuel Macron greeting its free application for its Le Chat chatbot last week with an enthusiastic post, declaring “vive Le Chat!”
The French government has also stepped up its support for the flagship startup with a series of contracts. Over the past two weeks, it has announced public-private partnerships with Mistral AI — one with the Ministry of the Armed Forces, the other with the public employment agency France Travail.
At the same time, Macron called on the private sector to buy European. “When you have two technological solutions, one European and one American, you have to choose the European one,” he argued during a videoconference with around twenty European business leaders last week, POLITICO has learned from a source close to the exchange.
That message got through. Just before the AI summit, French groups Veolia and Iliad both announced a partnership with the Mistral AI.
“There is a growing awareness on the public side. They realize that administrations need to work in partnership with Europe’s industrial fabric to speed it up, in the same way as the United States does,” said Mensch. “In the private sector too, there is a growing awareness that we need to host our own […] to be part of the global economy.”
For Mensch, this week’s AI summit comes at “a geopolitical moment with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi co-chairing the event.
