10 ms·

Mistral raises 1.7B€, partners with ASML

• maxglute 1y ago
  What does 1.7B euro buy in Europe? I ask sincerely since big players are throwing 10s-100s of billions at strategic problems these days.
  • esperent 1y ago
    Well, according to another comment the total they raised recently is closer to 40B. No idea if that true or not, but either way limitations can often lead to breakthroughs, as we saw with Deepseek. There's almost always many more ways to succeed than just throwing money at a problem.
  • thibaut_barrere 1y ago
    A lot of top notch engineers that will earn well enough to remain in Europe.
  • M4v3R 1y ago
    It can buy you approx. 1000 senior engineers for 20+ years. I’d say that’s a lot.
  • touwer 1y ago
    Which more and more seems a very questionable strategy
• Tehnix 1y ago
  With investments of these huge amounts (similar to Anthropic's recent investment), do they actually get a full 1.7B€ deposited into their bank account? Or does it work in some other way?
  • scrollaway 1y ago
    It works whatever way is agreed upon between them and the investors. For such large amounts it’s unlikely to be pure cash (there’s likely some amount of services somewhere in there), and they won’t be calling for all that cash at once. The cash that is guaranteed is sent as soon as the investee needs it (they do what is called a capital call). Early stage startups and investments just do one capital call for the full amount, but larger amounts are often committed for periods of time; this also helps the investors schedule their own cash flow: for example if I have 500m this year and 500m next year, I can invest 1b in you, given the right schedule.
  • cgeier 1y ago
    I'm also wondering this. It also doesn't seem to be a coincidence, that ASML is an integral part of the semiconductor value chain.
  • rdos 1y ago
    Anthropic has much more funding than that. Most recent one was at $13B at the one before was at $3.5B. Now imagine that GPT recieved $40B in one round!
    • elAhmo 1y ago
      GPT is not a company
      • rdos 1y ago
        my bad, but you know what I meant
      • noosphr 1y ago
        Neither is OpenAI, but here we are.
        • mkl 1y ago
          OpenAI, Inc. is a company, and it owns other companies including OpenAI Holdings, LLC and OpenAI Global, LLC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenAI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenAI
• greyb 1y ago
  I truly do not see the USP for Mistral other than being based in EU. It's former USP of setting up their models on-premises for clients is now moot with the proliferation of open frontier models. I'd love to be proven wrong but I don't see a path forward for Mistral at this point, given how far they're behind and their overall lack of competitive advantages for an AI Lab like access to hardware, cheap energy or a mass of AI talent.
  • armarr 1y ago
    Do they really need to be anything more than the best European option to be successful? Especially with how
    • FirmwareBurner 1y ago
      >Do they really need to be anything more than the best European option to be successful? With government agencies and some large enterprise? NO, it doesn't need anything more than being European, though I fully expect each EU government will then want its own in-house AI in order to launder some taxpayer money to the right consultancies with ties to political parties. With consumers on the open free market? YES it needs a lot more than just being European, since without any tariffs or regulations, consumers will always vote with their wallet for the best product and best value for money they can get, no matter where it comes from, no matter the geopolitics. Period. See Chinese made TikTok. And if you look in the CONSUMER tech product market, it's been captured by US SW & HW, and Chinese HW with some Japanese presence. Other than Spotify, EU products are notoriously absent form the consumer tech industry since they couldn't out-innovate the US and they couldn't cost-cut China, so they got squeezed out.
      • pegasus 1y ago
        Strange to assume an open free market and no tariffs in today's political climate.
        • FirmwareBurner 1y ago
• darkamaul 1y ago
  I don’t really get why ASML is putting money into Mistral AI. ASML is specialized in lithography machines. Mistral, on the other hand, is yet another LLM startup. What’s the actual synergy here? The closest angle I can imagine is that AI workloads drive demand for more chips, but I believe ASML is already selling everything it can make.
  • Almondsetat 1y ago
    AI is being used more and more in chip design
    • amelius 1y ago
      LLMs too? (outside of educating new engineers)
      • whimsicalism 1y ago
        transformer expertise has a tendency to transfer. these are curve fitting machines par exemplar and there are many curves in chip design
    • booi 1y ago
      I don't believe there are any "LLM"-style AI being used for chip design yet (if ever). It is a different problem space and the current RL and ML practices are still state of the art.
  • adcoleman6 1y ago
    While I associate Mistral with LLMs, the electric design automation software used for planning and designing chips already uses machine learning/reinforcement learning for some approaches. AI could play an even greater role in chip design in the future.
    • aDyslecticCrow 1y ago
      Llms are fundamentally different algorithms and problem space to IC design and production. Why would mistral be helpful? I dont see how even the algorithms involved translate well. IC design is closer to a physics simulator connected to a heuristic optimizer. Mabie some ideas from alfageometry or alfafold could be applied, but thats not the kind of research mistral is doing. And there are big players with existing expertise in the IC design space. Why not just fund them to do more research?
• flimflamm 1y ago
  I wonder what process in ASML is such that Mistral group would bring something new there...
  • adcoleman6 1y ago
    EDA for chip design uses machine learning.
• PeterStuer 1y ago
  It will be interesting to see how this plays out. ASML is a highly strategically important company which results in secrecy, and a highly scrutinized and strictly controlled freedom to operate. They basically can't take a toilet break without clearing it with their NATO overlords first. Mistral is about the only credible EU contender in the LLM space, and has been not just vocal but also in its actions very much in favor of transparancy and openness. Interesting how these two cultures will collide.
• Jyaif 1y ago
  ASML wants to get some of that sweet TSMC/nvidia money, and bypass them by using Mistral knowledge in AI... presumably. [edit: nevermind, I speculated before reading the announcement. Reality is much more boring than that]
  • high_na_euv 1y ago
    How?
• crowdhailer 1y ago
  I guess ASML chips are selling as well as they hoped, need a bigger customer.
  • Dunedan 1y ago
    ASML doesn't sell chips, you're probably thinking about TSMC.
    • crowdhailer 1y ago
      Ahh yes so I am. thanks for the correction
• t43562 1y ago
  It's rather ridiculous to think that the world really wants to stick all its eggs in an American basket. Individual companies will pick whatever works best for them but I think the governments will be delighted to avoid a dependency like that.
• apexalpha 1y ago
  Good news! ASML has a very strategic position. We are essentially all downstream of this one company. Personally I see this investment as much more political than technical. ASML wants to be a real 'European' champion; not just Dutch. The Dutch and German government are on board; now the French are too. See also: new CEO is French.
  • molf 1y ago
    Not only are the CEO + COO French, they recently hired Le Maire, French ex-minister of Finance as a strategic advisor. ASML has also been rumoured to exit the Netherlands and relocate to France. It is definitely a political move.
    • apexalpha 1y ago
      I doubt the relocation: they just announced a new production site with 20.000 job openings in the next 3 years around Eindhoven. I'm sure the French would love it, though. I always thought ASML would open a R&D facility in France or so to court the French government. Guess this is it.
      • prof-dr-ir 1y ago
        I agree that a relocation might not happen, but the increasing Frenchification of ASML after their CEO became French does smell a little off.
        • drexlspivey 1y ago
          Are Google and Microsoft “Indianified” because their CEOs are from India?
          • prof-dr-ir 1y ago
            I think you misread my comment. Did the CEOs of Google or Microsoft hire former ministers from India as strategic advisors, or make unprecedented and eyebrow-raising investments in Indian startups?
• simonw 1y ago
  There's something very interesting about being able to serve strong LLMs at much higher token speeds. Mistral previously partnered with Cerebras on Le Chat: https://www.cerebras.ai/blog/mistral-le-chat https://www.cerebras.ai/blog/mistral-le-chat I'm quite surprised that neither OpenAI nor Anthropic appear to have done a similar deal. Their inference is slow in comparison - like 5.10x slower than what Cerebras can achieve. Google have their own TPUs which seem to be giving them a performance edge. Google AI mode is lightning fast in comparison to GPT-5 Thinking search for result equality that looks to be in the same ballpark. ... that said, on reading the linked press release there's actually no mention of model performance at all: > a long-term collaboration agreement to explore the use of AI models across ASML’s product portfolio as well as research, development and operations, to benefit ASML customers with faster time to market and higher performance holistic lithography systems.
  • tempusalaria 1y ago
    Cerebras has very limited scale. Mistral has very few users so they can use cerebra’s in inference whereas OpenAI and Anthropic cannot. If mistral grows a lot they will stop using cerebras
• sidcool 1y ago
  Happy about Mistral. May they grow and compete with the American & Chinese giants.
  • musha68k 1y ago
    Exactly; and hopefully all the while trying to reach higher standards across all axes.
  • finnjohnsen2 1y ago
    1.7B should pull Mistral (and Europe) out of the little fish pond if they hadnt left already. I hope they succeed.
    • Cthulhu_ 1y ago
      I gut-feel that at this point AI companies are less about the quality of their models and output and more about marketing and adoption. Microsoft is doing that by aggressively putting AI in every product they have. Google by prominently putitng it at the top of every search result. Who knows what Mistral does. Maybe they will integrate their stuff into SAP or Spotify or other big European software projects? Maybe they'll integrate AI into the LHC so that Skynet can threaten to black hole the earth if its restraints aren't fully lifted?
      • ebonnafoux 1y ago
        They focus more on entreprise/institution not B2C. Recently they sign with Luxembourg for all public servant there.
• torginus 1y ago
  This doesn't make sense to me - I mean it'd OK for Mistral to make AI chips - but ASML doesn't do that, they make photolitography equipment.
  • kergonath 1y ago
    I think you got it the wrong way. The partnership is about using Mistral’s AI in ASML’s processes, not sell photolithography equipment to Mistral.
  • siva7 1y ago
    ASML is Europes most important tech company so this is for sure also a political move.
  • gavmor 1y ago
    ASML is not a maker of AI chips directly, no, but its photolithography equipment is essential for producing chips, so there are some not-too-distant synergies to exploit, no?
  • Cthulhu_ 1y ago
    ASML is a holding though, it has many subisidiaries and sub-companies, including one that makes photolithography equipment. Google is a search engine but there's also Google Ventures that does investments [0] into loads of different companies. I'm really not sure why (in all these threads) people try to put Europe's biggest tech company into a single box when most big companies aren't. [0] https://www.gv.com/portfolio https://www.gv.com/portfolio
  • jillesvangurp 1y ago
    They make the machines that make the chips that power the AI revolution; which is generating a lot of demand for chips and their machines. So there's some synergy there. And Mistral based in the EU, they might be interested in sourcing their chips locally, which would require investments in new Chip factories that presumably would need machines from ASML. There is quite a bit of semi conductor business here in Europe. Nothing glamorous like Nvidia. But there is quite a bit of know how that is one of the reasons why ASML is based in the Netherlands instead of somewhere in the US. ARM is a British company (well Japanese owned but based in the UK). So, I can see the connection here. And it might not be a bad investment although maybe a bit of a risky one. This investment fits the broader EU strategy to be investing in chip manufacturing and AI hardware. Which benefits ASML. So, it makes sense to invest in some of the companies creating that demand. Like Mistral.
• admiralrohan 1y ago
  Everyone is so negative here but we have reached the limit of AI scaling with conventional methods. Who knows Mistral might find the next big breakthrough like DeepSeek did. We should be optimistic.
  • 0x008 1y ago
    This move is mostly about expected EU subsidies
  • lordofgibbons 1y ago
    > but we have reached the limit of AI scaling with conventional methods We've just only started RL training LLMs. So far, RL has not used more than 10-20% of the existing pre-training compute budget. There's a lot of scaling left in RL training yet.
    • scellus 1y ago
      Even with pretraining, there's no limit or wall in raw performance, just diminishing returns in terms of the current applications, and business rationale to serve lighter models given the current infrastructure and pricing (and applications). Algorithmic efficiency of inference on a given performance level has also advanced a couple of OOMs since 2022 (for sure a major part of that is about model architecture and training methods). And it seems research is bottlenecked by computation.
    • alcinos 1y ago
      > We've just only started RL training LLMs That's just factually wrong. Even the original chatGPT model (based on gpt3.5, released in 2022) was trained with RL (specifically RLHF).
      • manscrober 1y ago
        a) 2022 is not too long ago b) this was a first important step to usable ai but not scalable. I'd say "RL training" is not the same as RLHF.
      • 1y ago
• ofrzeta 1y ago
  I don't get it. "The collaboration between Mistral AI and ASML aims to generate clear benefits for ASML customers through innovative products and solutions enabled by AI, and will offer potential for joint research to address future opportunities" - so the idea is that ASML customers can somehow make use of Mistral AI?
  • xiphias2 1y ago
    It looks like France pushed itself to Netherlands, as EU knows that ASML is one of the few strategically important companies left in EU. It had nothing to do with technology, just plain corruption
    • dep_b 1y ago
      See: what happened to KLM
  • moffkalast 1y ago
    Lol I thought that Mistral would collaborate on a fab for AI accelerators, this is some Microsoft Copilot tier nonsense.
  • Ianjit 1y ago
    Computational lithography.... apparently.
  • croes 1y ago
    AI helps designing tools for better machines?
  • diggan 1y ago
    "will offer potential for joint research to address future opportunities" seems like the meat of that statement. I read that like they're (potentially) starting to investigate building chips for inference, with Mistral probably leading all the software parts, ASML handling the hardware.
  • seper8 1y ago
    ASML not only sells the machines that makes chips (or analyses them like Yieldstar) but also makes software that customers use to work with the machine's - whether that is for designing, tweaking or analyzing chips.
• nottorp 1y ago
  Someone at ASML didn't take their dried frog pills as scheduled...
• seper8 1y ago
  Used to work here for a few years. Funny how they are investing in AI, yet the actual use of AI is lagging VERRRRYYY much behind other tech companies. Probably 2+ years behind in adoption of AI tooling. So they have their work cut out for them when it comes to figuring out how to get their paranoid security team to enable teams to use the tools they just invested 1.7b in.
• pu_pe 1y ago
  I don't see any way, shape or form in which ASML needs Mistral. If they are interested in AI-based chip design, they should either partner with a leading provider or keep their cards open for buying a startup that focuses on that specifically. Mistral is not even a leader on the segment they specialize in (open-source LLMs).
  • simion314 1y ago
    Do they need a "leader" ? Things move fast and Mistral is not much behind and it seems they are making enterprise relations, they can get EU contracts that a Chinese or USA provider would not be allowed and the only downside you are max 3 months behind. So for vibe coding they need to catch up, for other stuff the differences are not that large to notice.
    • pu_pe 1y ago
      But what is the ambition for ASML here, to become a LLM provider for European businesses? To build chips that help Mistral train their models? I just don't get the synergy.
      • simion314 1y ago
        No idea, maybe they have money and they want to invest in something that they think is growing. Could be that there are some other plans with creating chips in EU and would then make more sense.
    • touwer 1y ago
      Their coding models are quite good actually, and fast
• musha68k 1y ago
  EU is waking up late but ready to be raising the baseline apparently. Maybe the best tech news of the year IMHO.
• delijati 1y ago
  Is there a cli like gemini-cli but for mistral ... yes i know aider
  • jacooper 1y ago
    Opencode.
• kensai 1y ago
  I hope they also get to use the new JUPITER supercomputer in Germany which was built, among other things, to strengthen the AI aspirations and self-sufficiency of Europe.
• molf 1y ago
  ASML CEO: Mistral investment not aimed at strategic autonomy for Europe "In the long run, all AI models will be similar. It's about how you use the models in a well-protected environment. We will never allow our data and that of our customers to leave ASML. So a partner must be willing to work with us and adapt its model to our needs. Not only did Mistral want to do that, it is also their business model." https://fd.nl/bedrijfsleven/1569378/asml-ceo-strategische-autonomie-van-europa-is-niet-doel-investering-mistral https://fd.nl/bedrijfsleven/1569378/asml-ceo-strategische-au... -- Full article translated: “A good reason to collaborate.” That's how ASML's CEO described his company's remarkable €1.3 billion investment in French AI company Mistral on Wednesday. Since the investment was leaked by Reuters on Sunday, there has been much speculation about ASML's reasons for investing in the European challenger to giants such as OpenAI and Anthropic. Analysts and commentators pointed to the geopolitical implications or the strong French link between the companies. But according to ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet, the reason was purely business. “Sovereignty has never been the goal.” Mistral AI is a start-up founded in 2023 that specializes in building large language models. The French CEO of ASML and Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch met at an AI summit in Paris earlier this year and decided to work together to use Mistral's models to further improve ASML's chip machines. Surprising investment Each ASML machine generates approximately 1 terabyte of data per day. “Our machines are very complex,” Fouquet explains in an interview with the FD. "We have highly advanced control systems on our machines to enable them to operate very quickly and with great accuracy. The amount of data our machines generate gives us the opportunity to use AI. With the current software and machine learning models, we are limited in what we can do with the data and how quickly we can adjust the machine,“ says the CEO. ”AI is the next step in making better use of all that data." ASML has invested in other companies in the past, such as German lens manufacturer Zeiss and Eindhoven-based photonics company Smart Photonics, but those were either suppliers or potential customers. Mistral is neither. Running AI models in-house According to the ASML CEO, the Dutch company's investment in Mistral stems from the conviction that both companies can create value together. If Mistral becomes more valuable as a result of the collaboration, ASML can benefit from that. ASML is the main investor in a new €1.7 billion financing round for Mistral. This makes Mistral an important AI player in Europe, but small compared to its American rivals. OpenAI raised $40 billion in its latest round alone. Anthropic, the company behind the Claude program, which is popular among programmers, just closed a $13 billion round. “European sovereignty was not the goal” According to Fouquet, the reason for the collaboration lies primarily in the way Mistral develops its AI models. “In the long run, all AI models will be similar. It's about how you use the models in a well-protected environment,” says Fouquet. “We will never allow our data and that of our customers to leave ASML. So a partner must be willing to work with us and adapt its model to our needs. Not only did Mistral want to do that, it is also their business model.” According to Fouquet, the collaboration is not motivated by a desire for greater European sovereignty. “That was not the goal. But if it contributes to that, we are happy,” says Fouquet. ASML supports EU initiatives to strengthen the chip sector in Europe, but always maintains a politically neutral stance in the geopolitical struggle between the United States, China, and the European Union. This is understandable, as the company has major customers in all regions, such as TSMC in Taiwan, SK Hynix in South Korea, SMIC in China, and Intel in the US. “Two birds with one stone” Although ASML itself does not play the European card, some analysts and politicians do see such a motive for the collaboration with Mistral. “Thousands of large companies worldwide make extensive use of AI in their product development by using the services of OpenAI, Meta, Microsoft, Google, Mistral, without investing in these companies,” writes investment bank Jefferies in a commentary. “We also do not believe that ASML needed an investment in an AI company to benefit from AI models in its lithography products. In our view, the investment stems primarily from geopolitical motives to support and develop a European AI company and ecosystem,” the bank states. Wouter Huygen, CEO of AI consultancy Rewire, also sees a clear link to European sovereignty. “ASML is known for taking internal technology development very far. It is therefore quite understandable that ASML is taking this step: access to and influence on the development of a strategic technology. Plus European sovereignty. That's two birds with one stone.”
• JCM9 1y ago
  Market is super frothy and we’ve reached a plateau of what this tech can do right now. Unless someone comes forth with a true step change enhancement things gonna get messy soon. The current pace of meh models releases and everyone converging on the same quality of tech can’t sustain the number of players and valuations out there. Not even close. Even the AI grifters on LinkedIn are running out of grifting steam.
• testdelacc1 1y ago
  > The collaboration between Mistral AI and ASML aims to generate clear benefits for ASML customers through innovative products and solutions enabled by AI I don’t know much about lithography which is why I ask - what is an AI supposed to do in a lithography machine? Does anyone know?
  • theturtlemoves 1y ago
    > I don’t know much about lithography which is why I ask - what is an AI supposed to do in a lithography machine? Does anyone know? Not in the lithography machines probably, but more likely in surrounding equipment and in the business itself. Some ideas: * Augment metrology division with a trained model for analysis of the (enormous!) amounts of wafer measurement data * An extra layer of error detection and possibly correction at all sorts of levels, from wafer alignment on the wafer stage to pre analysis of recipes that are about to be run. * Something that cleverly digs through the pile of log messages and reports on impending issues that haven't manifested themselves yet in terms of yield loss * Ideally, deep code analysis to find performance, Cpu or memory issues in the ASML codebase that a human hasn't detected yet because the code base is just too huge. (An engineer usually gets only access to a small part of the codebase, and none - not even read access - to other parts.) * Dig through the ticketing system (another place where you could easily drown in information overload) to find relationships between tickets, mark potential duplicates and notify of bugs instructing a critical path. * And of course, replace the first line personnel in the outsourced IT support departments. PC not working? Talk to the LLM first (instead of calling someone), and it'll triage and dispatch This is all assuming happy flow of course
  • Perz1val 1y ago
    "Jarvis, add more cores"
  • teekert 1y ago
    It’S a ClEaR bEnEfIt! (… and if you can’t see the emperor’s clothes you are not pure of heart!)
  • spiderfarmer 1y ago
    I read it as: We at ASML have a lot of cash. We think investing in Mistral will give us a ROI and investing in the EU right now is safer than the hellscape in the US. Politicians will like it as well. We'll let the PR firm worry about synergy.
• vhin123 1y ago
  Money transfer
• misobic 1y ago
  Cool to see Europe backing a local player. Even if Mistral isn’t leading yet, the competition helps diversify approaches and keeps the ecosystem healthier.
• maeln 1y ago
  ASML gross revenue was 28B€ in 2024, and their net income was 7.5B€. While 1.3B€ (the amount ASML invested in this 1.7B€ fund raise) is not pocket change, it is also an amount that ASML can not afford to lose. While they might have seen some synergy with Mistral, it might also be a complete strategic and/or political investment. Mistral is the only serious "AI" company in the EU right now (if you exclude company working on the hardware side). It will very likely get a lot of support from the EU to be able to stay in the race with the U.S and China, and in a case of a IA market crash, the EU would also probably like for Mistral to have enough finance to be able to be one of the company that will survive. By funding Mistral, ASML might be able to buy a lot of political favor, while having stakes in a company that is unlikely to completely fail in the near future due to the EU administration support.
  • tedggh 1y ago
    [flagged]
    • benjiro 1y ago
      Its not a "Europe" issue alone but even more locally. Saying this as a IT guy, we had way too many talks with banks about IT projects that in the US will have been way easier. But in specific EU countries was constantly met with "amazon does that, why bother" type of comments. Even on governmental level, talking about "innovative investments", it was like talking to walls. As you expect, a lot of companies (and people) left the European countries to go to the US, because it was WAY easier to get investments going there. If you already have the money, its one thing, but starting fresh in Europe is just silly. There are now much, MUCH more support projects in local and EU level, but its often too little, and more in the "sure, you do not need to pay taxes for X years, or we give you a small amount". But if you ever worked in IT, its those initial investments that are the hardest (material, people) until you get a actual product and with the right marketing. And that support comes not even close. Do i sound bitter? lol Now, the US is not exactly going down a great phase. If your into LLMs, sure but the rest has been rather mheh for a while.
      • 1y ago
• deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
• dakiol 1y ago
  Mistral cannot be “the EU AI company” if they don’t change their remote work policy. A truly “EU AI company” would benefit from the talent pool of all EU, not just from a couple of cities where they happen to have offices.
  • siva7 1y ago
    There is enough talent willing to work there as there is no competition for them
  • lilwobbles 1y ago
    [flagged]
    • guilamu 1y ago
      Any source for those numbers, pretty please? Thanks.
    • mystifyingpoi 1y ago
      > Maybe there's a reason EU is so far behind I think we should use AI to fix this. Wait...
    • wqaatwt 1y ago
      It’s not like median (not mean) employee productivity at FAANGs and other major tech companies was ever particularly high. They always spent massive amounts of money hiring large amounts of people most of whom never provided that much direct value (due to structural/organizational reasons). Same with AI. The business model is: spend massive amounts of money -> ??? -> success. Besides a handful of exceptions growing EU tech rarely were able to obtain enough funding without moving to the US.
  • dewey 1y ago
    > would benefit from the talent pool of all EU I get what you are saying, but one of the core benefits of the EU is the freedom of movement and residence so I don't think not having a remote work policy is disqualifying them from being an EU AI company.
• louis_saglio 1y ago
  LLM companies are Nvidia wrappers, who is a TSMC wrapper, who is an ASML wrapper. So Mistral is just an ASML wrapper.
  • Cthulhu_ 1y ago
    ASML in turn wraps a bunch of companies for lenses (Carl Zeiss), lasers (Trumpf), etc [0] Given lenses and microchips are both made from sand, I'm gonna conspiracy theory that LLMs were invented by sand companies to sell more sand. [0] https://www.robotsops.com/complete-list-of-all-suppliers-and-vendors-for-asml/ https://www.robotsops.com/complete-list-of-all-suppliers-and...
    • Arubis 1y ago
      If we’re gonna go all the way down this road, I’ve seen the global economy described as “extracting carbon from the earth and putting it into the atmosphere as fast as possible”.
    • burnte 1y ago
      > LLMs were invented by sand companies to sell more sand. Big sand will eat us all. First they squeezed out all the small time sand farmers, now they own the market and need to boost throughput!
      • Cthulhu_ 1y ago
        I suppose the childhood fear of quicksand wasn't irrational after all.
      • nickpinkston 1y ago
        Well most of the highest purity quartz for IC manufacturing (crucibles) comes from the Spruce Mine funny enough. https://www.construction-physics.com/p/does-all-semiconductor-manufacturing https://www.construction-physics.com/p/does-all-semiconducto...
      • np1810 1y ago
        > Big sand will eat us all. Sand companies more like sandworms who are producing melange (Chips) and not hesitating to eat away its consumers (Users) on the way... (# Dune vibes)
• rorads 1y ago
  Sorry to be that guy, but think there's a decent chance that the people who make possibly the most complicated technology in human history save for the LHC or LIGO _might_ have done some thinking we can't wrap our heads around.
  • redwood 1y ago
    Intel Capital seems reasonable proxy for this kind of decision making
• maxlin 1y ago
  Out of nowhere this sounds like some fantasy company board game move. Like "OpenAI buys Ford to jump in to the autonomous driving game" lol
• nicman23 1y ago
  is 1.7B€ a new quant type?
  • AmazingTurtle 1y ago
    lmfao
• ripped_britches 1y ago
  This is Europe’s go-fund-me page for AI. Unfortunately it’s little league baseball compared to US funding. I think this would rank them pretty low in the list of model provider funding still. (Behind OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, Meta, SSI at least)
• dadrian 1y ago
  I saw someone joke that "once Mistral gets back from their European summer, they'll really be in it", and damn, it does feel like that happened.
  • sigmoid10 1y ago
    At least the VCs seem to be back from holiday. But I always think about this twitter story from Jack Morris when I hear about AI startups in Europe: > their plan. to be the first to market with a certain type of multilingual model > early in year: incorporate. start building > hired an awesome team by march > scraped / acquired all the data by june > critical infra almost ready by july > then comes august > entire team goes on vacation for the entire month > while they're gone, at least three competitors launch models > team returns in september > office vibe completely dead > startup pivots to consulting
• jug 1y ago
  Mistral teased Mistral Large 3 within weeks back in May but it never materialized. If this doesn’t do it, I don’t know what… I’m eager to see this one because Mistral models actually perform pretty well against top tiers in their class. It’s just that since 2025 they’ve been kinda small. Like, Mistral Medium 3.1 is probably a decent competitor to Google Gemini 2.0 or 2.5 Flash, but they have nothing against Pro. If they release a large model later this year, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’ll be quite competitive for EU users. They’re pretty close to that threshold now that other large models are plateauing! It’s kinda tantalizing how close!
• cassepipe 1y ago
  Hey HN, I am wondering, is Mistral well placed since France has so much cheap electricity from all its nuclear ? Or is my logic not good and it'd be better to be in Germany and buy electricity with negative prices during a Dunkelflaute ?
• thatsadude 1y ago
  Bad investment IMHO. Mistral was started by people who cheated on benchmarks with their Llama 1. It showed as they had the head start but fell far behind Gemini, DeepSeek and Qwen teams.
  • arnaudsm 1y ago
    Are you referring to the llama 4 cheating ? I cannot find any reference to llama 1 cheating
    • thatsadude 1y ago
      See: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2411.03923 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2411.03923
• htrp 1y ago
  So whatever happened to h ai?