Paris-based Gen AI startup Mistral, which builds large-language models (LLMs) similar to the technology developed by US tech giant OpenAI, has announced a content partnership with leading news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The multi-year deal will provide Mistral’s AI assistant, called Le Chat, with access to all of AFP’s text news stories. The news agency produces 2.3k text stories a day in six languages (French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, German and Arabic).
“Partnering with a globally trusted news agency like AFP allows Le Chat to offer reliable, factual, and up-to-date responses, verified by professional journalists. We believe improving the accuracy of these responses is a key step in the deployment of our technology,” said Mistral cofounder Arthur Mensch.
The financial details and length of the deal have not been disclosed.
Founded in 2023, Mistral has fast positioned itself as a European alternative to Big Tech companies building LLMs, such as OpenAI, Meta and Google. The startup’s flagship model Mistral Large is fluent in five languages (English, French, Spanish, German, and Italian).
“Through this partnership, we are providing our clients with a unique multicultural and multilingual alternative,” said Mensch.
It is the first content partnership secured by Mistral so far — but the startup is following in the steps of its competitors. Yesterday, Google announced a similar deal with The Associate Press for its AI chatbot Gemini.
OpenAI also announced a content partnership with Axios yesterday; last year, it signed deals with The Financial Times as well as with leading French newspaper Le Monde. OpenAI says that it has now partnered with 20 media organisations.
Mistral has raised over €1bn since it was founded in 2023 and was recently valued at €5.8bn, making it one of Europe’s most valuable AI companies.
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/mistral-afp-partnership-news/
