Microsoft Corp. investments in Mistral AI will be analyzed by the antimonopoly authority of the European Union.

It is worth noting that currently the deep relationship of the technology giant based in Redmond, Washington, with OpenAI, which developed the world’s most popular chatbot based on artificial intelligence called ChatGPT, is in the territory of close attention from regulators.

Last Monday, February 26, French Mistral AI announced a strategic partnership with Microsoft. As part of the cooperation between the two companies, it is planned to provide customers of the Microsoft Azure cloud service with access to the latest models of artificial intelligence of a startup.

The Redmond-based tech giant announced its intention to invest $16.3 million in Mistral AI. The startup specializes in the development of algorithmic models similar to those used in OpenAI for chatbots and other artificial intelligence services. At the same time, Mistral AI’s digital products are publicly available. Microsoft’s investments will be converted into equity as part of the next round of startup financing.

The Redmond-based tech giant has collaborated mainly with OpenAI in the artificial intelligence industry. Microsoft has invested approximately $13 billion in the development of the world’s most popular chatbot. Currently, the relationship between the technology giant and the startup is the object of close attention from the regulators of the EU and the United Kingdom.

Microsoft President Brad Smith, in a speech on Monday at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, said that innovation and competition require a wide range of support for proprietary open-source artificial intelligence models. He also spoke about the tech giant’s investments in data centers worth $5.6 billion in Europe over the past two weeks.

A spokesperson for the European Commission on Tuesday, February 27, said that watchdogs will analyze Microsoft’s investments in Mistral AI after receiving a copy of the agreement. Potentially, these actions could be the beginning of an official investigation, which is a negative factor affecting the plans of the technology giant.

On Monday, Mistral AI also presented its new artificial intelligence model called Mistral Large. The startup claims that this development has unique reasoning abilities. Moreover, a new artificial intelligence model can perceive information and generate content in five languages, including English, French, Spanish, German, and Italian.

The context window of the digital product presented on Monday has 32 thousand tokens, allowing consumers to accurately precise information from large documents. In this case, developers are allowed to create their own moderation policies.

Mistral AI was created last year by former engineers from Google DeepMind and Meta Platforms Inc. The startup positions itself as a brave European player who challenges the dominance of the United States in the artificial intelligence industry. In December, Mistral AI closed a $415 million funding round from several investors, including Salesforce Inc. and Nvidia Corp. At that time, the startup was valued at about $2 billion.

As we have reported earlier, Amazon Bedrock to Add Mistral AI Models to Its Lineup.