Mistral AI

In May of twenty twenty three, three former Meta researchers in Paris raised one hundred five million euros before they had written a single line of code. Arthur Mensch, Guillaume Lample, and Timothée Lacroix had a thesis that terrified Silicon Valley. Build powerful AI models, then give them away for free. Mistral released its first model as an open source download. Anyone could run it, modify it, and build products on it without paying a cent. Competitors charged per token. Mistral charged nothing. Within months, thousands of developers built applications on Mistral models. The free product became the fastest distribution channel in enterprise AI. The revenue came from the enterprise layer on top.