A lot of national defense stuff is a de facto "government sanctioned monopoly" and this is certainly the same flavor. Market forces are different if the industry is perceived to be vital to continued sovereignty.

You are severely misusing the term monopoly.

There is demand for AI that is not US or China controlled. Mistral is serving that demand.

Being the only(?) competitive European model probably makes them a de-facto monopoly for doing sensitive European stuff.

Which government? Sanctioned how? What stops other European companies from competing with Mistral? Is the situation better in the US?

That's rich coming from a country who's top AI contender just announced 80B in yearly losses. Looks a lot like a subsidised duopoly to me.

french are pretty proud man. pro-euro europeans too!

I mean, the model architecture is basically that of GLM 5.3 with slightly more parameters and slightly more active parameters, so it should probably be able to beat GLM 5.3 enough post-training.

Actually, with Trump in the Office, "AI/Data Sovereignty" is quite a strong market forces. From Europe point-of-view, any US company is a potential risk (hello Starlink)

;-)

It's well known that every Mistral employee is a fonctionnaire. No.