Earlier this week, Microsoft stated it had made a 15-million euro ($16 million) funding in Mistral, and would quickly make the Paris-based firm’s AI fashions obtainable through its Azure cloud computing platform.
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Following the announcement, a Microsoft spokesperson instructed Reuters it had invested in Mistral with out taking a stake. Later, Microsoft clarified that its funding would convert into fairness in Mistral’s subsequent funding spherical, a typical observe amongst huge tech firms investing in AI startups.
Mistral and the French authorities had beforehand lobbied for looser rules underneath the European Union’s wide-ranging AI Act, ostensibly to keep away from over-regulating smaller startups.
Some EU lawmakers on Tuesday questioned whether or not Mistral had lobbied on Microsoft’s behalf, and the extent of the French authorities’s information of the partnership.
“That story appears to have been a entrance for an American-influenced huge tech foyer,” Kim van Sparrentak, an EU lawmaker who labored carefully on the AI Act, instructed Reuters. “The Act nearly collapsed underneath the guise of no guidelines for ‘European champions’, and now look. European regulators have been performed.”
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However the French authorities denied any prior information of the settlement. “Yesterday, we realized of the technological partnership between Mistral and Microsoft. It is nice information {that a} younger French firm has joined Microsoft’s beforehand unique partnership with OpenAI on its Azure platform,” a French finance ministry official instructed Reuters.
“France, like all different member states, took half within the writing the AI Act. On the time, we weren’t conscious of this partnership venture, but it surely has no particular penalties.”
On Wednesday afternoon, Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch stated the corporate remained dedicated to its mission as an impartial European firm.
“We’ve a reselling settlement with Microsoft, that we’re very enthusiastic about,” he wrote on social media platform X. “Alongside comparable partnerships, it should speed up our progress.”
Microsoft didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.
