Microsoft Invests in Mistral AI, Forms Partnership to Offer French Startup's Models on Azure
• Microsoft invested $16 million in French AI startup Mistral AI as part of a new partnership • The investment will convert to equity in Mistral's next funding round; Microsoft will own less than 1% at Mistral's $2B valuation • Mistral unveiled a new large language model, Mistral Large, to rival models like GPT-4 • Microsoft and Mistral signed a distribution deal to offer Mistral's models on Azure • The partnership draws scrutiny from EU regulators already investigating Microsoft's relationship with OpenAI