Mistral to explore designing own chips, CEO says (www.cnbc.com)

French startup Mistral AI announced plans to explore designing its own chips, reflecting its ambition to gain greater control over its infrastructure as it competes with industry giants like OpenAI and Anthropic. CEO Arthur Mensch emphasized that developing custom semiconductors could significantly reduce deployment costs for AI models, which rely on processing units known as tokens. Currently, Mistral utilizes Nvidia chips while investing in data centers in France and Sweden to enhance its computing capacity for running AI models. The establishment of a new data center in France is particularly notable as it addresses Europe's need for improved AI infrastructure—an area where the continent has lagged. Mensch highlighted that this investment is not only about technology but also about maintaining Europe's competitiveness on a global scale. Moreover, Mistral introduced its "Vibe" platform, aiming to tackle enterprise tasks like drafting and coding autonomously, thereby positioning itself within the growing field of agentic AI. This move indicates Mistral's commitment to accelerating revenue growth, setting ambitious targets to increase from €200 million last year to €1 billion by 2026, although it still lags far behind its American counterparts.