Jacobin - Why Is Europe So Far Behind Silicon Valley? Blame Monopolies.

OMI Europe director Max von Thun was quoted on Europe’s failure to check monopolization of the emerging AI space by Big Tech monopolies, illustrated by the partnership between Microsoft and Paris-based Mistral AI.ok.

Von Thun described the tie-up as symptomatic of the “huge structural concentration that you see in the tech sector, which is not new, which has been around for a long time, but which has basically put the Big Tech companies in a position to essentially co-opt or neutralize any potential players in AI who might challenge them directly.”

Valued at €2 billion, French start-up Mistral AI has been billed as one of Europe’s great hopes in the escalating commercial battle over artificial intelligence (AI). Can the Paris-based outfit — founded in April 2023 by three former researchers at Google and at Facebook’s parent company Meta — find a place in a market carved up by the Silicon Valley giants? Alongside German company Aleph Alpha, Mistral has caught the eye of key investors on both sides of the Atlantic, hauling in upward of €500 million in last year’s funding rounds from the likes of veteran venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz or French billionaire Xavier Niel. Headed by the photogenic Arthur Mensch, a graduate of the elite École Polytechnique, the company was one of France’s star guests at this winter’s rendition of the World Economic Forum in Davos. Has Emmanuel Macron’s “start-up nation” finally found its champion?

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