Mistral Gagnant: Microsoft partners with MistralAI

The announcement by Eric Boyd — CVP Azure AI Platform, Microsoft — mentions a multi-year partnership that will

enables Mistral AI with access to Azure’s cutting-edge AI infrastructure (…) delivering best-in-class performance and scale for AI training and inference workloads for Mistral AI’s flagship models

as well as a go-to-market avenue

Microsoft and Mistral AI will make Mistral AI’s premium models available to customers through the Models as a Service (MaaS) in the Azure AI Studio and Azure Machine Learning model catalog (…) The ability to use Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment (MACC) for purchasing Mistral AI’s models is available today.

Brad Smith’s tweet underlines that this deal is

grounded in our commitment to provide access to the most advanced #AI models, while building trustworthy and safe AI systems and products globally. We look forward to helping unlock opportunities in Europe and around the world.

Some initial reactions taunt that Microsoft has an “history” of turning OpenAI into ClosedAI and that MistralAI is just another one to bite the dust.

Brad Smith told CNBC on Monday. at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona

I really think this day is one of the most important days in terms of Microsoft’s technology support for Europe.

Which comes à propos as Microsoft is facing pressure from EU antitrust regulators over its reported $10B+ investment in OpenAI.

A move that could appease competition concerns under the light of potential EU regulations asking Microsoft to offer a variety of AI offerings.