Under a new relationship, Microsoft will make the artificial intelligence models developed by French company Mistral AI available through its Azure cloud computing platform, the firms announced on Monday.
In an attempt to draw more users to its Azure cloud services, Microsoft is attempting to offer a wider range of AI models than its largest wager in OpenAI, as seen by the multi-year agreement.
As part of the agreement, Microsoft would acquire a minority share in Mistral, the firm informed Reuters without providing specifics.
Microsoft acknowledged funding Mistral, but also clarified that it does not own any shares in the business. Because of its excessive sponsorship of OpenAI, the tech giant is the subject of regulatory inquiry in both Europe and the US.
The Paris-based business develops large language models (LLM) that comprehend and produce text in a manner akin to that of a person, both private and open source. OpenAI pioneered LLM with ChatGPT.
Under the arrangement, Azure users will be the first to have access to the company’s most recent proprietary model, Mistral Large. The cloud computing infrastructure of Microsoft will host Mistral’s technology.
Additionally, Mistral has collaborated with Google and Amazon to distribute its models. According to a spokesman, Mistral Large will be made available on additional cloud platforms within the next few months.
Arthur Mensch, a former researcher at Google’s DeepMind, along with Timothée Lacroix and Guillaume Lample, who had previously worked on the artificial intelligence teams at Meta, formed Mistral.