AI startups have multiplied in Paris over the past couple of years — and with them, the need for qualified AI researchers and engineers, as well as seasoned sales executives, is growing rapidly.
The AI talent market is tight, and founders tell Sifted the French capital has become the theatre of a fierce battle for the best profiles.
One of the key players competing in that fight is Mistral, which builds large-language models (LLMs) — the same technology used to power tools like ChatGPT. The AI scaleup, which has raised more than €1bn since it launched in 2023, is growing fast — and hiring en masse.
In just a year and a half since it launched, Mistral’s team has reached at least 105 employees, according to LinkedIn data. That’s twice as many people as six months ago, when the company reported 52 employees to Sifted.
It doesn’t seem that hiring is slowing down either: Mistral’s job board is currently showing nearly 40 job openings for permanent positions across all functions (business, engineering, operations, product and science), and in locations across Europe and the US.
So who exactly is joining Mistral’s ranks? Sifted analysed all 105 public LinkedIn profiles showing a permanent position currently held at Mistral to find out where the scaleup is getting its best talent from. Mistral declined to comment and to confirm the numbers.
Mostly scientists and engineers
Nearly 70 profiles analysed by Sifted are in science and engineering functions, which represent two-thirds of the total identified employee base. These include research roles like AI scientists; engineers; and product roles like solutions architects, who provide technical expertise to clients using the company’s tech and help them fine-tune it to their needs.
A fifth (22%) of employees are in business and sales positions. Mistral also already has a team of six people dedicated to public affairs.
Mistral’s science and research team is largely made of big tech alumni
Sifted counted 32 employees (30% of overall headcount) dedicated to science and research, including AI and data scientists and researchers.
Almost half (15) of them have previously worked at Meta, Google or DeepMind; Mistral’s founders are DeepMind and Meta alumni too.
Two-thirds (66%) of those who Sifted identified as researchers or scientists attended one or more of the three following universities:
- Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in the US, for degrees in fields like language technologies, machine learning and computer science. Mistral cofounder and chief scientist Guillaume Lample did a masters’ degree in AI at CMU.
- École Polytechnique, also known as X — one of France’s most prestigious science and engineering schools, which offers courses that have a strong focus on applied mathematics. Lample also attended X.
- École Normale Supérieure (ENS), another reputable French institution. Most of the employees who attended ENS completed an ‘MVA’ masters (Maths, Vision and Learning) — a data science and machine learning programme that Mistral cofounder Arthur Mensch also studied.
Sifted also found that half of Mistral’s team reported having completed (or being in the course of completing) a PhD, according to their LinkedIn profiles.
The US is already a big hub
The majority (67%) of Mistral’s team is based in France, according to the data pulled by Sifted. For the past six months, however, the company has increased hiring efforts in the US — starting with the recruitment of Marjorie Janiewicz as US general manager last May. Janiewicz was previously chief revenue officer at cybersecurity company HackerOne and geolocation platform Foursquare.
Janiewicz said at the time in a LinkedIn post: “I will be building a best-in-class US GTM [go-to-market] team and operations.”
Sifted counted 26 US-based Mistral employees — about a quarter of the company’s workforce — across all functions (research, engineering, business, sales and operations).
Gender parity is still a way off
Overall, Mistral’s team is made up of 22% women and 78% men, according to the analysed LinkedIn profiles. The split is roughly the same when looking specifically at research and science roles, where women represent 19% of profiles and men 81%.
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/mistral-talent-analysis/
