Google Cloud might have found its new poster child with Mistral AI deal

Google Cloud has partnered with Mistral AI to distribute its generative AI models across Google’s infrastructure, marking a significant cozying of relations between the two firms. 

The agreement will allow Mistral AI to use Google Cloud’s infrastructure to test, build, and scale its large language models (LLMs), the company said, while enabling it to benefit from Google Cloud security and privacy standards.

This news comes after Mistral AI announced its new 7B open LLM will be natively integrated into Google’s Vertex Model Garden. 

Mistral’s latest LLM, the mixture-of-expert (Mixtral) model, will be available in the Google Cloud Marketplace at a later stage according to the announcement.

The Parisian startup specializes in developing open source generative AI technologies, with its co-founder and CEO Arthur Mensch stating the firm’s objectives revolve around an “open, responsible, and decentralized approach” to generative AI.

Commenting on its new partnership with Google Cloud, Mensch highlighted the role the cloud giant will have in helping Mistral AI make its models more accessible to a variety of organizations around the world.

"Google Cloud offers a flexible hardware and software stack that will help us continue on our trajectory towards building larger, more sophisticated open source AI models across more languages, as well as make those models easier to access for all types of organizations around the world," he said. 

Mensch also emphasized the two firm’s alignment on the safe development of AI systems.

“Google Cloud's open source support and responsible AI principles, extensive and reliable infrastructure capabilities, and commitments around privacy and security align strongly with our mission to develop openly available AI models."

Could Google Cloud help Mistral compete with OpenAI?

Mistral shook up the global AI landscape when it announced its $113 million seed round in June 2023, and the startup recently secured another $415 million in Series A funding.

This bumped the company’s valuation up to $2 billion and caused some to ask whether the Mistral AI can mount a challenge against OpenAI or Anthropic and stand as a European challenger to the US AI heavyweights.

The performance of its latest open source LLM, 8x7BB, impressed the AI community boasting performance benchmarks that beat GPT-3.5 and Meta’s Llama 2 70 billion parameter model.

Yet there was still doubt around whether Mistral could really go toe-to-toe with Microsoft-backed OpenAI or Anthropic, which has received investment from both Google and Amazon over the last year.

With this partnership, Mistral has its own hyperscaler behind it and this may be a game changer in enabling the firm to compete with industry counterparts across the Atlantic. 

Mistral now not only has the significant financial backing of Google but also access to the Google Cloud Marketplace that will help it market, sell, and distribute its models. 

From Google’s perspective, it has another AI poster child in its stable, and this time, instead of being snubbed by Anthropic for AWS, Mistral selected Google Cloud as its primary cloud provider moving forward.