France's Mistral AI plans expansion into Canada (www.theglobeandmail.com)

French AI startup Mistral AI said it is scouting customers in Canada and plans to hire AI scientists and open an office in Montreal as part of a broader push into North America. CEO Arthur Mensch, in Montreal for the All In conference, highlighted strong interest from finance, public sector, manufacturing and logistics firms and framed Mistral as a European “sovereign” alternative to U.S. hyperscalers—competing with the likes of OpenAI, Anthropic and Toronto-based Cohere. The company, which raised $2 billion at about a $14 billion valuation, is positioning itself on enterprise-grade deployments rather than consumer apps and already serves European clients operating in Canada. Technically, Mistral builds large language models and distinguishes itself by releasing open weights and source code, and by supporting on-prem or customer-hosted runs so data need not be sent back to Mistral—an attractive feature for organizations worried about vendor lock-in and data sovereignty. Mensch emphasized close, integrative work with clients to drive real ROI (contrasting with studies that find most orgs see little benefit from generative AI), citing a CMA CGM deployment that used AI agents to streamline container handling and reportedly cut costs by 80%. The company’s Canada push faces procurement headwinds favoring domestic suppliers, but its enterprise focus, open models, and sovereignty pitch make it a notable new option for Canadian firms.