French AI firm Mistral has entered into a partnership with BMW and the aerospace group Airbus to boost growth by fostering links with defense and industry giants.
The Paris-based company, looking to punch above its weight in a sector dominated by US and Chinese firms, said it would be involved with car crash tests and plane design.
Mistral signed a five-year partnership with Airbus to apply AI to defense and space activities and helicopter manufacturing, though the value of the contract has not been revealed.
For BMW, Mistral will build specific models that “understand the physics” of the vehicles and are intended to optimize crash-test procedures.
“The most important use cases for AI are located in research and development and the creation of physical objects,” the chief executive, Arthur Mensch, said.
Mistral is already closely tied with ASML, the Dutch firm producing chipmaking equipment indispensable for the high-end semiconductors, which invested in the French company last year.
“It’s an interesting new market where Europe is strong… Europe has significantly high-end manufacturing companies,” Mensch noted.
The company this month bought an Austrian startup, Emmi AI, that specializes in digital simulations for industry, after earlier snapping up the French cloud computing startup Koyeb.
Mensch called defense a ‘growing business’ for his firm and revealed he had a ‘dedicated team’ working on it. Mistral has grown to around 1,000 employees since its 2023 founding and is now building its own computing infrastructure.
Furthermore, AFP has a deal with Mistral allowing the company’s chatbot to draw on the news agency’s articles to formulate responses. The company also announced a deal for 10 megawatts of computing power with the US data center operator Digital Realty.
