This week’s Mistral-Microsoft deal is an example of France’s take on “technological sovereignty.” The country seeks to promote French firms as world-beaters, fitting Europe’s larger ambition to reduce reliance on other regions for critical technologies, including AI.
If that means its local French darlings have to partner with American giants, so be it.
Mistral’s mission
Mistral has self-styled itself as an all-European AI prodigy able to rival ChatGPT’s maker OpenAI or Google’s AI lab. It also lobbied hard against the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act, fearing it would smother fledgling European AI outfits; that arguably led Paris to demand and obtain changes to the law in high-octane negotiations.
But Mistral has eagerly gobbled up money from non-French patrons. In December it bagged €385 million from sources including U.S. venture capital behemoths Andreessen Horowitz and Lightspeed. Microsoft, which as part of the new deal will allow Mistral to use its supercomputers to train new AI models, also plunged €15 million into the company.
EU policymakers say it’s evidence that — far from being the poster child of EU tech innovation — Mistral is a stalking horse for U.S. interests. Kim van Sparrentak, one of the members of the European Parliament who worked on the AI Act, called Mistral a “front for American-influenced Big Tech lobbying.”
Some in Brussels are also reexamining Paris’ role in the tense last-minute negotiations of the bloc’s landmark AI rulebook. France pushed hard to limit oversight to European AI firms, all in the name of giving them space to compete with bigger foreign rivals. Now that Mistral has jumped into bed with Microsoft, those EU officials openly wonder if France — lobbied hard by Mistral — was up front with other European countries.
