Buzzy French startup Mistral has released a new AI-powered assistant for businesses as it ramps up efforts to compete against Big Tech players like Microsoft and OpenAI.
Dubbed ‘Le Chat Enterprise’, the new product tailors Mistral’s general-purpose conversational assistant Le Chat, released last year, to business needs.
Mistral builds large-language models (LLMs), the same type of technology powering generative AI tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The two year-old startup is considered one of Europe’s strongest competitors in the field.
Plugging into enterprise data across Google Drive, Sharepoint, OneDrive, Google Calendar and Gmail, Le Chat Enterprise is intended to help employees better retrieve and connect fragmented information thanks to natural language prompts.
It also offers templates to build AI agents to automate routine tasks ranging from writing weekly corporate digests to carrying out data analysis.
These features are similar to those offered by Microsoft through its Copilot assistant — a tool integrated into the Microsoft 365 apps, which lets employees carry out tasks such as writing drafts in Word, creating PowerPoints, take notes during meetings and analyse data in Excel.
Targeting enterprise customers
Mistral, which has raised over €1bn since launching, has targeted enterprises for a long time. The startup says that its open-source approach is better suited to business needs, enabling companies to build more customised tools while better protecting their privacy. Le Chat Enterprise can be deployed by users on-premises, or in a public or a private cloud.
So far Mistral has secured partnerships with a number of enterprise customers including French bank BNP Paribas and insurer AXA. In 2024, the startup reached around €30m in annual recurring revenues (ARR).
Mistral is valued €5.8bn — making it Europe’s most valuable AI startup.
