Europe’s Mistral expands in Silicon Valley in hunt for AI staff

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Mistral, Europe’s most valuable artificial intelligence start-up, is ramping up its US expansion in an effort to compete with Silicon Valley rivals for AI talent.

Paris-based Mistral is building out an office in Palo Alto, California, as it looks beyond its European roots for engineers and scientists, as well as expanding its US sales team.

One of Mistral’s three co-founders, Guillaume Lample, is also weighing a potential move from Paris, according to two people familiar with the company’s thinking. However, another person close to the company said no decision has yet been made.

The company, valued at €6bn during a €600mn funding round in June, has been hailed by the likes of French President Emmanuel Macron as evidence that Europe can compete with the US and China in developing cutting-edge AI.

Mistral’s expansion in California follows in the footsteps of many promising European start-ups that have been drawn to the US for talent, capital and customers, which often prove easier to attract in the world’s largest tech market.

Striking a transatlantic balance may be trickier for Mistral, which has established itself as an alternative to the dominance of US AI companies by offering “sovereign AI” to customers in Europe and other parts of the world.

It has increasingly fallen into the orbit of Silicon Valley, having been backed by venture firms such as Andreessen Horowitz and Big Tech groups including Microsoft and Nvidia.

Mistral is hiring a team of AI scientists and engineers in California, as well as sales and administrative staff, according to public job listings. Currently, Mistral says it employs more than 100 people, with Paris still home to the largest proportion of employees. It has around 20 staff in the Bay Area, according to staff listings on LinkedIn and a person close to the company, most of whom joined in the past six months.

Mistral’s new outpost lays down a challenge to rival generative AI companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic in the highly competitive war for talent raging in the sector. In April, Majorie Janiewicz joined the company as its first US general manager and global head of revenue.

The French company, which is still less than two years old, has sought to make efficiency its chief differentiator against its better-funded US rivals, arguing that it builds its AI models more cheaply. Nonetheless, AI has become a highly capital-intensive industry, and alongside powerful chips, top researchers and engineers are the hottest and most expensive commodities.

Staff from fast-growing start-ups such as Adept, Inflection and Character AI have been hired by Amazon, Microsoft and Alphabet respectively, with the Big Tech companies willing to pay billions of dollars in deals designed to absorb the best staff from the fledgling companies while stopping short of full takeovers.

Other leaders in the field are launching their own start-ups. Early employees at OpenAI, including former chief technology officer Mira Murati and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, have left to launch their own businesses. Meanwhile, OpenAI itself recently opened an office in Paris, where Meta already has a significant AI lab.

Mistral’s own founding team previously worked at Meta and Google’s DeepMind. The company develops open-source AI models, allowing businesses and developers to access and customise them to suit their applications and needs.

Mistral said it was “continuing to reinforce its presence and commitments to growth in the US to offer American customers full control, privacy and portability in their AI journey”.

“To achieve it, Mistral has opened an office in Palo Alto and supported an executive presence on the ground . . . Our founders are committed to support this development,” the company added.

Additional reporting by Leila Abboud in Paris, Hannah Murphy in San Francisco and Madhumita Murgia in London