Mistral CEO @arthurmensch on why they’re buying GPUs instead of renting:

The world is supply constrained. When chips are scarce, you don’t want middlemen between you and NVIDIA. Europe’s cloud partners also couldn’t deliver at the scale they needed... so they started owning the hardware.

That gives them independent token generation, the ability to train on their own compute, and faster scaling.

Owning the assets raises capital needs, but he says it makes the business more sustainable if you don’t overleverage. IPO in the next few years.

Full interview:
00:00 Mistral’s move beyond models
02:40 Competing with China’s AI models
05:29 Why GPU scarcity is pushing Mistral to buy, not rent
07:41 Financing the compute buildout
08:56 France, jobs and young people
10:49 AI safety and doomsday fears
12:50 Preparing for an IPO