Microsoft and Mistral AI announce new partnership to accelerate AI

The AI industry is currently undergoing a significant transformation, characterized by a growing interest in more efficient and cost-effective models, reflecting a broader trend in technological advancement. Leading this transformation is Mistral AI, an innovative and pioneering company. 

Their dedication to fostering the open-source community and achieving exceptional performance resonates well with Microsoft's commitment to developing trustworthy, scalable, and responsible AI solutions.

Today, we are pleased to announce a multi-year partnership between Microsoft and Mistral AI, a recognized leader in generative artificial intelligence. Both companies share a deep-rooted commitment to innovation and practical applications, bridging the gap between cutting-edge research and real-world solutions. 

This partnership with Microsoft provides Mistral AI access to Azure's state-of-the-art AI infrastructure, accelerating the development and deployment of their next-generation large language models (LLMs). 

It also represents an opportunity for Mistral AI to unlock new commercial prospects, expand into global markets, and foster ongoing research collaboration.

Microsoft's partnership with Mistral AI focuses on three core areas

1. Supercomputing infrastructure 

Microsoft will support Mistral AI with Azure AI supercomputing infrastructure, delivering top-tier performance and scalability for AI training and inference workloads for Mistral AI's flagship models.

2. Scale to market 

Microsoft and Mistral AI will make Mistral AI's premium models available to customers through Models as a Service (MaaS) in the Azure AI Studio and Azure Machine Learning model catalog. 

Alongside OpenAI models, the model catalog offers a diverse selection of both open-source and commercial models. Customers can utilize Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment (MACC) for purchasing Mistral AI's models, effective immediately. 

Azure's AI-optimized infrastructure and enterprise-grade capabilities provide Mistral AI with additional opportunities to promote, sell, and distribute their models to Microsoft customers worldwide.

3. AI research and development 

Microsoft and Mistral AI will explore collaboration opportunities around training purpose-specific models for select customers, including European public sector workloads.