After Google, Mistral AI partners with Microsoft to accelerate AI innovation: Know more

Redmond-based tech giant Microsoft, on Monday, February 26, announced a multi-year partnership with Mistral AI, a company specialised in generative artificial intelligence.

The announcement comes a couple of months after Mistral AI signed a partnership with Google Cloud.

This partnership with Microsoft enables Mistral AI with access to Azure’s cutting-edge AI infrastructure. This collaboration will help accelerate the development and deployment of their next-generation large language models (LLMs). 

It also provides Mistral AI with new commercial opportunities, enables expansion to global markets, and fosters ongoing research collaboration.

“We are thrilled to embark on this partnership with Microsoft. With Azure’s cutting-edge AI infrastructure, we are reaching a new milestone in our expansion propelling our innovative research and practical applications to new customers everywhere. Together, we are committed to driving impactful progress in the AI industry and delivering unparalleled value to our customers and partners globally,” says Arthur Mensch, Chief Executive Officer of Mistral AI.

The partnership’s focus

Microsoft’s partnership with Mistral AI is focused on three core areas: 

• Supercomputing infrastructure: Microsoft will support Mistral AI with Azure AI supercomputing infrastructure for AI training and inference workloads for Mistral AI’s flagship models.  
• Scale to market: 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 catalogue. Customers can now purchase Mistral AI’s models using Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment (MACC). Azure’s AI-optimized infrastructure and enterprise-grade capabilities provide Mistral AI with additional opportunities to sell and distribute its models to Microsoft customers worldwide.
• AI research and development: Microsoft and Mistral AI will explore collaboration around training purpose-specific models for select customers, including European public sector workloads. 

Last year, Microsoft unveiled the integration of Mistral 7B into the Azure AI model catalog accessible through Azure AI Studio and Azure Machine Learning.

Mistral-7B is the company’s foundational model that is based on customised training, tuning, and data processing methods. This optimised model allows for the compression of knowledge and deep reasoning capacities despite having a small number of parameters.

“We have tested Mistral Large through the Azure AI Studio in a use case aimed at internal efficiency. The performance was comparable with state-of-the-art models with even better latency. We are looking forward to exploring further this technology in our business,” says Philippe Rambach, Chief AI Officer, Schneider Electric. 

Mistral Large is a general-purpose language model that can deliver on any text-based use case thanks to state-of-the-art reasoning and knowledge capabilities. It is proficient in code and mathematics, able to process dozens of documents in a single call, and handles French, German, Spanish, and Italian (in addition to English).

Mistral AI: Developing generative AI

Founded by Timothée Lacroix, Guillaume Lample, and Arthur Mensch, Mistral AI specialises in generative artificial intelligence.

The company aims to develop new models of generative artificial intelligence for companies, combining scientific excellence, an open-source approach, and a socially responsible vision of technology.