OpenAI Investor Microsoft Accelerates AI Investment

Partnering with French Startup MistralAI

Microsoft (MS), which invested in ChatGPT developer OpenAI, is rapidly expanding its investments in the artificial intelligence (AI) sector. This time, it has partnered with French startup MistralAI, known as the "European version of OpenAI." This strategy is interpreted as an effort to quickly enhance AI development efficiency by conducting simultaneous public collaborations with multiple companies.

[Image source=Reuters Yonhap News]

On the 26th (local time), MS announced in a statement, "We are announcing a multi-year partnership with MistralAI, a recognized leader in the AI field," adding, "This is to create new commercial opportunities and expand into global markets." Valued at 2 billion euros, MistralAI is a newly established AI startup founded last year by Arthur Mensch, a 30-something genius researcher formerly at Google, along with two researchers from Meta Platforms.

The partnership mainly focuses on three areas: supercomputing infrastructure, market expansion, and AI research and development (R&D). Accordingly, MistralAI became the second company, after OpenAI, to provide large language models (LLMs) on MS's cloud service Azure. Additionally, the two companies agreed to collaborate on AI model R&D, including for European public sector services.

The exact scale of MS's investment has not been disclosed. MS confirmed that it made a small investment in MistralAI but does not yet hold any company shares. However, major foreign media outlets reported that MS is expected to secure shares in MistralAI soon, similar to its investment in OpenAI.

Unlike OpenAI, which does not disclose any source code of its AI models, MistralAI, known as the European version of OpenAI, is based on "open-source" models. Arthur Mensch, CEO of MistralAI, said, "Through MS Azure's cutting-edge AI infrastructure, we can showcase innovative research and practical applications to customers everywhere," calling it "a new milestone in expansion." On the same day, MistralAI also launched its own chatbot, Le Chat, which has functions similar to ChatGPT.

Arthur Mensch Mistral AI CEO [Photo by Reuters]

Accordingly, MS expects that by collaborating simultaneously with AI technology companies worldwide, it can reduce its dependence on OpenAI while also improving AI development efficiency. MS is currently running 1,600 AI models in its data centers, of which 1,500 are based on open source. Prior to the partnership with MistralAI, MS recently announced a new AI data center investment plan worth $5.6 billion in Germany and Spain.

The Associated Press evaluated, "The partnership between MS and MistralAI could reduce dependence on OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT." IT media TechCrunch also analyzed, "MS is building alternatives to OpenAI and Anthropic," adding, "The open-source partnership strategy is a good way to keep Azure customers within the product ecosystem and could also help with regulatory investigations." MS is currently under pressure from regulatory authorities in the European Union (EU), the United States, and the United Kingdom regarding its $13 billion investment in OpenAI.

In this context, Brad Smith, President of MS, emphasized that MS is striving to widely provide its AI data center infrastructure to other companies to accelerate AI innovation and competition. Attending the Mobile World Congress (MWC) conference held in Barcelona, Spain, he explained, "We will enable MistralAI to train and deploy next-generation AI models on our AI data center infrastructure." He also mentioned that MS plans to invest in producing its own semiconductors, similar to Intel and AMD. Regarding whether MS would invest in a semiconductor venture led by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in partnership with Middle Eastern investors, he responded, "It is too early to answer."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.