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mesmertech · a year ago
Love it as a consumer because Mistral is probably not doing any more open weights if they get tangled with Microsoft.

But man, as a business owner in EU, this would just make me not want to build an AI startup in EU

rsynnott · a year ago
> But man, as a business owner in EU, this would just make me not want to build an AI startup in EU

Like, purely on the basis that MS might not be allowed to take you over?

TBH I'd assume the FTC would at least be asking questions here, too. EC and FTC thinking on competition is generally not all _that_ different, but the EC tends to be quicker to act these days (this was not always the case; the FTC was very much out in front on Intel and Internet Explorer back in the day).

anonylizard · a year ago
You don't own what you can't sell. Any asset value will be massively reduced if its untransferable.

Mistral isn't exactly some decade-long state funded national champion. Its a 1 year old startup whose core staff all come from American tech companies. With 0 revenue and minimal market share, there's like no conceivable metric in traditional antitrust theory to block this. Yet the EU prevents it from taking foreign investment all the same.

Look at TSMC in comparison. It IS the national champion of Taiwan, yet its majority foreign owned, doesn't stop it from underpinning the Taiwan economy and spawning massive ecosystems in its local areas.. Taiwan's government understands its place in the international economy, so prefers to cooperate and trust its international partners.

janice1999 · a year ago
> But man, as a business owner in EU, this would just make me not want to build an AI startup in EU

If a Chinese company with massive government contracts had invested in OpenAI there is no way that the US would not start an investigation.

throwaway55671 · a year ago
Microsoft has massive government contracts in literally every EU country. US is an ally, not antagonist/enemy.
JumpCrisscross · a year ago
> If a Chinese company with massive government contracts had invested in OpenAI there is no way that the US would not start an investigation

Sure, but if a European did we wouldn't.

So if you start in America, you can access both continents. If you start in China, you can access Europe and Asia. If you start in Europe, you're limited to one.

Granted, this is just a proble. But if it amounts to something, it's an asymmetrically chilling move.

wallaBBB · a year ago
You think there even would be an investigation/probe into it? Perhaps a really quick one.
mythz · a year ago
Time will be the ultimate judge but Mistral's Co-founder/CEO is still committing to be a leading provider of open weight models [1]:

> Clarifying a couple of things since we’re reading creative interpretations of our latest announcements:

- We’re still committed to leading open-weight models! We ask for a little patience, 1.5k H100s only got us that far.

- We have a reselling agreement with Microsoft, that we’re very excited about. Alongside similar partnerships, it will accelerate our growth.

- Microsoft invested in a small convertible note alongside many other companies, as a distribution partner. We are an independent European company with global ambitions, that part is not changing either.

> We’re seeing some interest for Le Chat and Mistral Large, on both la Plateforme and Azure, and we’ll be iterating fast!

[1] https://twitter.com/arthurmensch/status/1762818733016322168

spidersenses · a year ago
Statements like these are only a momentary snapshot. As soon as sufficiently money is at stake the board might change their tune overnight. The whole Altman-fired-from-OpenAI-then-reinstated drama should be warning enough.
t8sr · a year ago
The current lack of anti-monopoly enforcement and corporate oversight in the US is a race to the bottom. Should the rest of the world compete by letting corporations run amok, acquire all competition and build monopolies? Or should they try to regulate, but risk driving away founders for whom the American legal environment is extremely lucrative?

It's similar to the debate France had about raising the progressive tax rates - some ultrarich people would rather give up their French residency, than pay higher taxes.

There's clearly stuff the EU could do to be more competitive, but I think the core issue is that American investors can expect less risk and bigger payoffs, because the environment is friendlier to them, but the environment being friendlier to them leads to regular people getting screwed by giant companies that operate with no oversight. Fast forward the 2020s and you literally have planes falling out of the sky.

I don't think there are any great options.

I'm also aware this is a fringe view on HN, kinda by definition. It's a forum for founders, mostly in the US, and the median opinion on what you should be able to do with your company on here is extreme by most peoples' standards. But the echo chamber needs some dissent on this point.

whiplash451 · a year ago
This move from MSFT is clearly perceived as aggressive from EU given how fragile EU sovereignty in AI is at this point.

If EU wants to own its AI future, that’s not a great way of getting started.

sanxiyn · a year ago
I thought EU had money a lot more than €15M (Microsoft investment), actually a lot more than €1.8B (Mistral valuation). Why didn't EU make an offer?

If EU wants to own its AI future, it has enough money to buy one. They decided not to.

pelorat · a year ago
No AI capable EU native cloud provider exists. Everything in Europe runs on Azure or Amazon.

Also, EU doesn't but things for their consumers, do you even know what the EU is?

nerbert · a year ago
Personally, growing a startup enough to catch the eye of EU regulators is a problem that I’d like to have.
throwaway55671 · a year ago
Doing all the work and taking all the stress only to have the EU remove a chance of growth and exit is a problem that I never want to have. I went through some failed startups, and at least that was our own fault, but still I never want to do that again. I don't know what I'd do in this situation.
JumpCrisscross · a year ago
> Love it as a consumer because Mistral is probably not doing any more open weights if they get tangled with Microsoft

The solution is to mandate open weights. Not kneecap your flagship by putting it at a permanent capital disadvantage.

neverrroot · a year ago
It's tough, it's also part of the reason so little is done here, just compare the size of market capitalization of say DAX40 (German top 40) or CAC40 (French top 40):

DAX40 $1.9T

CAC40 $2.8T

There are single companies in US that exceed both of these values.

Scarblac · a year ago
Part of that is that you're taking a fixed number of companies. So if Europe has more, but smaller companies, the value of the top-40 would be lower than if they had fewer but larger companies. To me the first sounds healthier, everything else being equal.
gkedzierski · a year ago
EURO STOXX 50 would probably be a better benchmark, which has a total market cap of around €4.0T, which is more than any single company. (your general point stands though, it's nowhere near the US market)
RandomLensman · a year ago
Because the European capital markets are very different with far less local money going into it, more bank funding etc. The divergence between the US and Europe there is more than 100 years old.
almatabata · a year ago
> But man, as a business owner in EU, this would just make me not want to build an AI startup in EU

I am not an expert but does this kind of probes not help businesses against things like hostile take overs and against VC buying up all your competitors to crush you with scale?

crimsoneer · a year ago
I mean, the FTC would absolutely look into this agreement if you did it in the US. Regulators "looking into" things is not a thing we should be upset about, that's why they exist.
RamblingCTO · a year ago
And not only this, everyone loses if the FTC and the likes don't do their job properly. I'm still amazed how much "small" people argue for big entities like microsoft. You won't have these problems in your lifetime.
dmezzetti · a year ago
Totally agree with this sentiment. I love open-source and will be on it's side to the end. But I'm not sure I want it forced upon people either. Companies should believe in the model and developers should choose companies that believe in that model.
ljm · a year ago
I imagine there has to be some kind of security implication here, the same reason why the US is restricting the export of AI chipsets to china. It's not ideal if US megacorps are heavily investing in or buying out EU AI startups.
mnau · a year ago
EU has to tech scene, so it doesn't want a potentially successful project to be transferred to US.

What is the most biggest EU software company? SAP?

odood · a year ago
15 million in Mistral vs 13 billion in OpenAI. There must be a different reason at play here.
dacryn · a year ago
if you can handicap a competitor for 15 million to save your 13 billion investment, go for it

There is a reason EU is investigating this, and this is exactly it. They are sick of the Microsoft extinguish aspect

mrkramer · a year ago
Microsoft only invested $16M....lol.....I thought Mistral would demand more but I guess partnership with Microsoft is more valuable than cash.
pelorat · a year ago
To be honest. $16M is a huge amount of money for most companies based in Europe.
whiplash451 · a year ago
To be frank, I am more worried about the fact that they raised $385M from US investors at the seed stage. That speaks volume about how much it really is an EU company. Good luck to EU for retaking control of this ship.
throwaway55671 · a year ago
385M USD is way too much for EU investors. They usually invest 10x-100x less. So the alternative without US investors would be to have no startup of this kind - great job, that will really help EU grow!
anonylizard · a year ago
What makes US investors so uniquely ambitious and generous? I'm starting to appreciate the US financial sector more and more.
whiplash451 · a year ago
Let’s fix the root cause instead of leaning in to a subpar EU investment funnel.

EU has billions to invest in AI. I don’t buy that EU has “much less money than the US”.

Alifatisk · a year ago
Damn, that’s an interesting point