ASML is the flashy, public-facing partner. Mistral is also working with the French government and defense industry for applications that are unlikely to be publicly announced, but are bound to bring in much more money.
The European-sovereignty angle is what makes Mistral's strategy harder to read from the outside. If a meaningful share of revenue comes from EU government and defense contracts, the public benchmarks against OpenAI/Anthropic stop being the right scoreboard — they're optimizing for different procurement rules and a different definition of "trustworthy." Curious if anyone has visibility into how those contracts are structured: per-seat, on-prem, or something closer to hosted with sovereign keys?
I don’t know much about the really secret stuff, but Mistral is known to help customers build their own infrastructure to deploy their models and handle confidential data securely. They are also building data centers for their own cloud. It’s difficult to have a clear picture, in most cases we know about the partnership without having all the details (e.g. with ASML, CMA-CGM, or HSBC, or even worse with government or EU institutions).
I'd like to add that we have publicly the procurement from the US government for the US models. And I also guess the Chinese government uses their model providers as well. So I wouldnt see so strange anymore.
"...a long-term collaboration agreement to explore the use of AI models across ASML’s product portfolio as well as research, development and operations..."
ASML is one of the clients Mistral keeps referencing, for example here: https://mistral.ai/news/forge But it isn't clear exactly what they've been doing together. The Forge page only mentions they "train models on the proprietary data that powers their most complex systems and future-defining technologies."
ASML’s EUV money printer has nothing to do with their ability to deploy that money in illiquid investments instead of to their own shareholders
ASML buying equity in one company in tangentially related industry (just because they’re in Europe and the pickings are slim in both offerings and growth capital) has nothing to do with any synergy or integration with ASML’s utility (and bottleneck) to the chip supply chain
remember when you were studying for standardized tests as a teenager? this is what the high scoring answer would be
A friend of mine works for ASML and it’s suggested they were nudged quite heavily “from above” to make this investment, rather than it being an actual strategic play by ASML. Basically “sovereign EU AI” is the play here.
a cursory understanding of the subcontinent's abysmal venture capital ecosystem and bloc wide risk aversion would have anyone reach the same conclusion
Because the European ecosystem is a joke for reasons that are dumb
and this is a symptom
There’s nothing to say when the party does an investment thats their system they have total control in a state capitalist society that raised their population on marxism
And the US ecosystem is diverse to have relevant purpose built vehicles doing private investments, in conjunction with various public market operations by the state
