Latest news with #MGX
Yahoo
15-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Mistral releases Voxtral, its first open source AI audio model
As AI systems become more capable, speech is fast becoming the default way we communicate with machines. French AI startup Mistral has jumped into the audio race with its first open model, aiming to challenge the dominance of walled-off corporate systems with open-weight alternatives. On Tuesday, Mistral announced the release of Voxtral, its first family of audio models aimed at businesses. The company is pitching Voxtral as the first open model that's capable of deploying 'truly usable speech intelligence in production.' In other words, no longer will developers have to choose between a cheap, open system that fumbles transcriptions and doesn't really understand what's being said, and one that functions well, but is closed, leaving developers with a higher bill and less control over deployment. For businesses, that means Voxtral offers an affordable alternative that the company claims is 'less than half the price' of comparable solutions. Mistral says Voxtral can transcribe up to 30 minutes of audio. Due to its LLM backbone, Mistral Small 3.1, it can understand up to 40 minutes, allowing users to ask questions about the audio content, generate summaries, or turn voice commands into real-time actions like calling APIs or running functions. Voxtral is also multilingual, with the ability to transcribe and understand languages including English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Hindi, German, Dutch, and Italian. The company is offering up two variants of its 'speech understanding models'. The first, Voxtral Small, has 24B parameters for production-scale deployments, and is competitive with ElevenLabs Scribe, GPT-4o-mini, and Gemini 2.5 Flash. The second, Voxtral Mini, has 3 billion parameters for local and edge deployments. There's also an ultra-cheap, stripped-down, fast API version of the 3B model called Voxtral Mini Transcribe that is optimized for transcription-only use cases and promises to outperform OpenAI Whisper for less than half the price. Users can try Voxtral for free by downloading the API on Hugging Face or testing the models in Mistral's chatbot Le Chat. Integrating the API into applications starts at $0.001 per minute, according to the company. The launch comes a month after Mistral announced Magistral, its first family of reasoning models that work through problems step-by-step for improved reliability. Mistral, one of the top AI firms in Europe, is well-known for its advocacy pushing open source AI models. Earlier this month, TechCrunch reported that the company is in talks to raise up to $1 billion in equity from investors like Abu Dhabi's MGX fund.
Yahoo
09-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Mistral AI seeks $1bn equity funding with potential MGX backing
Mistral AI, one of the major players in the European AI sector, is reportedly engaged in negotiations to raise up to $1bn in equity funding. Potential investors include Abu Dhabi's sovereign technology investor, MGX. According to a report by Bloomberg, these discussions are in preliminary stages and have not yet defined a valuation for Mistral should the financing materialise. The Paris-based AI startup is also seeking substantial debt financing from French banks, including Bpifrance, which is an existing stakeholder. Founded in France in 2023, Mistral focuses on developing open-source large language models (LLMs) and is currently claimed to be Europe's largest AI startup. It has amassed over €1bn ($1.17bn) in investment to date, achieving a €5.8bn ($6.79bn) valuation after last year's fundraising round. In its latest Series B round concluded in June 2024, Mistral raked in €600m ($643m) in funding. Mistral was co-founded by Arthur Mensch, Guillaume Lample, and Timothée Lacroix. The company categorises its LLMs into general purpose, specialist, and research models. These models often use an open-weight structure under an Apache 2.0 license and are accessible across common machine learning platforms, though top-tier models sometimes carry commercial restrictions. Mistral adopts distinct naming conventions for its models, such as 'Mistral 7B' which highlight parameter counts or terms like 'Mistral Large.' Some updates lead to changes in model names, as demonstrated when 'Mistral Large' transitioned to 'Mistral Large 2'. The company's Le Chat platform functions as a beta version chatbot, which was released in February. Le Chat competes with OpenAI's ChatGPT and other generative AI platforms by leveraging intelligent conversation interfaces. It incorporates various models including the advanced multimodal Pixtral 12B. In May 2025, Mistral formed a joint venture with MGX and Nvidia with an aim to create what is projected to be Europe's most extensive AI data centre near Paris. In June 2025, Mistral and oil and gas major TotalEnergies formed a partnership to establish an innovation lab designed to explore digital energy production solutions that transition towards low-carbon technologies. "Mistral AI seeks $1bn equity funding with potential MGX backing" was originally created and published by Verdict, a GlobalData owned brand. The information on this site has been included in good faith for general informational purposes only. It is not intended to amount to advice on which you should rely, and we give no representation, warranty or guarantee, whether express or implied as to its accuracy or completeness. You must obtain professional or specialist advice before taking, or refraining from, any action on the basis of the content on our site. Error while retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data
Yahoo
09-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Mistral AI seeks $1bn equity funding with potential MGX backing
Mistral AI, one of the major players in the European AI sector, is reportedly engaged in negotiations to raise up to $1bn in equity funding. Potential investors include Abu Dhabi's sovereign technology investor, MGX. According to a report by Bloomberg, these discussions are in preliminary stages and have not yet defined a valuation for Mistral should the financing materialise. The Paris-based AI startup is also seeking substantial debt financing from French banks, including Bpifrance, which is an existing stakeholder. Founded in France in 2023, Mistral focuses on developing open-source large language models (LLMs) and is currently claimed to be Europe's largest AI startup. It has amassed over €1bn ($1.17bn) in investment to date, achieving a €5.8bn ($6.79bn) valuation after last year's fundraising round. In its latest Series B round concluded in June 2024, Mistral raked in €600m ($643m) in funding. Mistral was co-founded by Arthur Mensch, Guillaume Lample, and Timothée Lacroix. The company categorises its LLMs into general purpose, specialist, and research models. These models often use an open-weight structure under an Apache 2.0 license and are accessible across common machine learning platforms, though top-tier models sometimes carry commercial restrictions. Mistral adopts distinct naming conventions for its models, such as 'Mistral 7B' which highlight parameter counts or terms like 'Mistral Large.' Some updates lead to changes in model names, as demonstrated when 'Mistral Large' transitioned to 'Mistral Large 2'. The company's Le Chat platform functions as a beta version chatbot, which was released in February. Le Chat competes with OpenAI's ChatGPT and other generative AI platforms by leveraging intelligent conversation interfaces. It incorporates various models including the advanced multimodal Pixtral 12B. In May 2025, Mistral formed a joint venture with MGX and Nvidia with an aim to create what is projected to be Europe's most extensive AI data centre near Paris. In June 2025, Mistral and oil and gas major TotalEnergies formed a partnership to establish an innovation lab designed to explore digital energy production solutions that transition towards low-carbon technologies. "Mistral AI seeks $1bn equity funding with potential MGX backing" was originally created and published by Verdict, a GlobalData owned brand. The information on this site has been included in good faith for general informational purposes only. It is not intended to amount to advice on which you should rely, and we give no representation, warranty or guarantee, whether express or implied as to its accuracy or completeness. You must obtain professional or specialist advice before taking, or refraining from, any action on the basis of the content on our site.
Yahoo
08-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Mistral AI reportedly in talks for $1 billion funding from MGX, others
-- French artificial intelligence startup Mistral AI is reportedly in discussions to secure up to $1 billion in equity funding from multiple investors, including Abu Dhabi fund MGX. According to a Bloomberg report on Tuesday, the company is also negotiating hundreds of millions of euros in debt financing from French lenders, including existing investor Bpifrance SACA. The discussions remain preliminary and could change, with no clear indication yet of what Mistral's valuation would be following such an investment. If completed, this deal would strengthen connections between France and the United Arab Emirates in the artificial intelligence sector, an industry currently dominated by American and Chinese companies. Mistral AI, founded in 2023, stands as Europe's largest AI startup. The company has already raised more than €1 billion ($1.17 billion) since its inception, reaching a valuation of €5.8 billion after a funding round last year. Related articles Mistral AI reportedly in talks for $1 billion funding from MGX, others Bernstein starts bullish on Kuaishou, Bilibili on rising video ad tide Meta invests $3.5 billion in AI glasses partner EssilorLuxottica - Bloomberg Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
08-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Mistral is reportedly in talks to raise $1B
French AI startup Mistral is in talks to raise up to $1 billion in equity from investors including Abu Dhabi's MGX fund, reports Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the matter. Mistral is also talking to French lenders like Bpifrance SACA to raise hundreds of millions of euros in debt, per Bloomberg. TechCrunch has reached out to Mistral for comment. Mistral, makers of the Le Chat chatbot, is one of the most significant players in the European AI landscape with a focus on open-weight LLMs. The startup has raised $1.19 billion to date at a $6.51 billion post-money valuation, according to PitchBook. Its last fundraise was a Series B in June 2024. Mistral is already working with MGX – a government-backed $100 billion AI fund – and Nvidia to build Europe's largest AI data center campus. The UAE has also committed to spending €50 billion on AI projects in France, part of French President Emmanuel Macron's push for AI sovereignty.
