French AI start-up Mistral has partnered with Cerebras Systems, an artificial intelligence chip firm backed by UAE tech conglomerate G42, to power the launch of its new AI assistant Le Chat, which claims to be the world’s fastest, delivering 1,000 words per second.
Mistral – a maker of open-source AI technology – is aiming to challenge fellow open-source contenders Meta Platforms and China's DeepSeek, which rocked global markets late last month with claims of cutting-edge performance at low cost.
All three are competing with ChatGPT creator OpenAI.
Releasing Le Chat
On Thursday, Mistral released an app called Le Chat that it said can respond to user questions with 1,000 words per second.
Cerebras says it is providing the computer power behind those results, which it claims makes Mistral the world's fastest AI assistant, ahead of both OpenAI and DeepSeek.
Silicon Valley-based Cerebras – which has filed for an initial public offering that is delayed while US officials review G42's involvement with the firm – is one of the few challengers to Nvidia for training AI models.
But the partnership with Mistral is for serving an app based on its model to users – a step called "inference" in the AI industry.
As rivals have closed in on matching OpenAI's models, the speed of delivering answers to users has become more of a priority, according to Cerebras' chief executive Andrew Feldman.
"You want better answers. And to get better answers, you need more compute at inference time," Feldman told reporters. "It was our first announced major win at a tier-one model maker, and so we're really proud of that."
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The AI market
The move comes as global tech luminaries, business leaders and politicians are gathering in Paris for an AI summit set to last until next Tuesday.
It also follows weeks after DeepSeek's powerful yet low-resource R1 model stunned the world with its performance, shooting it to the top of app download charts.
Promising "the ultimate AI sidekick for life and work", Mistral posted a video to X showing users asking Le Chat to do tasks like generate images, create schedules for projects, and get live sports updates.
"This is a significant further step in our journey from beginnings as a scientific team to a team that's making products for as many people as possible," co-founder Arthur Mensch told French daily Le Figaro.
The company also launched two subscription versions of Le Chat, alongside the existing free option, with Mensch promising they would be faster and offer an improved experience.
AFP strikes deal for France's Mistral AI to use news articles
The rise of Mistral AI
Mistral shot to prominence following its 2023 founding by researchers Mensch, Guillaume Lample and Timothee Lacroix, becoming Europe's greatest hope of matching US heavyweights.
It was initially hailed for its limited use of resources compared with the likes of Google and OpenAI – a trait now associated with DeepSeek for many observers.
"We're managing to train our models more efficiently than DeepSeek," Mensch told Le Figaro.
"There are things we've learned, very specific mathematical facets. We're keen to contribute again to the progress that will be made on top of DeepSeek," he added.
Mistral took in 600 million euros in a summer fundraising round, bringing its valuation to around six billion euros.
AFP news agency signed a deal with Mistral in mid-January allowing the startup's chatbot to draw on the news agency's articles to formulate responses.
(With newswires)
