French AI startup Mistral plans to go public rather than be acquired

French startup Mistral AI, as a new force in the field of open source AI, recently announced that it plans to go public instead of being acquired.

"We're not selling," Mistral CEO and co-founder Arthur Mensch told Bloomberg TV. There had been rumors that Microsoft might acquire the company. Part of the reason is that Microsoft invested 15 million euros (about $15.6 million) in Mistral and established a partnership with it. Mensch added that Mistral does not need financing at this time because the company has sufficient capital.

Mistral was founded in April 2023. The founding team consists of former engineers from Google's deep learning division DeepMind and Meta. Mensch said the company has grown rapidly since its inception.

To further expand its market, Mistral plans to open offices in the Asia-Pacific region, starting with Singapore. Mistral provides an open source base model that helps customers customize and deploy it within their organization. Mensch believes that companies are "a little bit struggling" to realize the value of AI, and he expects full implementation of AI applications to take place over the next few decades.