Microsoft has announced a partnership with Mistral AI to speed up AI innovation.
The artificial intelligence industry is now spreading its branches in various directions. One of them is the tech industry. AI has also transformed many industries and also increased the productivity of various industries. The need for cost-effective models, and in order to gain an edge over others and achieve higher technological advancement. Mistral AI is an innovator and trailblazer. Mistral AI’s commitment to developing an open-source community to achieve better performance fits well with Microsoft’s goal to develop trustworthy, scalable and responsible AI solutions.
On February 26, 2024, Microsoft announced a multi-year partnership with Mistral AI a leader in generative AI. Both companies aim to have steadfast innovation and practical application, with this they will fill the gap between pioneering research and real-world solutions.
This partnership will help Mistral AI access Azure’s cutting-edge AI infrastructure to enhance the development and deployment of their next generation of Large Language Models (LLMs). This will also open new opportunities for Mistral AI and expand to global markets, they will also have ongoing research collaboration.
On this occasion, Arthur Mensch, CEO, of Mistral AI said “We are thrilled to embark on this partnership with Microsoft. With Azure’s cutting-edge AI infrastructure, we are reaching a new milestone in our expansion propelling our innovative research and practical applications to new customers everywhere. Together, we are committed to driving impactful progress in the AI industry and delivering unparalleled value to our customers and partners globally.”
Microsoft’s partnership is focused on three core areas:
- Supercomputing Infrastructure: Microsoft under this partnership will support Mistral AI by giving access to Azure AI supercomputing infrastructure. The best-in-class performance and scale for AI training and inference workloads for Mistral’s flagship models.
- Scale to Market: Microsoft and Mistral AI have decided to make Mistral AI’s premium models available for customers as a model as a service. This will be available in Azure AI Studio and Azure Machine Learning model catalog. Catalog has a diverse selection of both open-source and commercial models. Today, Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment (MACC) can be used to purchase Mistral AI’s models. Moreover, Azure’s AI-optimized infrastructure and enterprise-grade capabilities offer Mistral AI new opportunities to promote, sell and distribute its models to Microsoft customers worldwide.
- AI Research and Development: Microsoft and Mistral AI will collaborate and explore training purpose-specific models for select customers, including European public sector workload.
Expanding AI Functions With Azure and Mistral AI
In November 2023, at Microsoft Ignite, Microsoft launched the integration of Mistral 7B into the Azure AI Model Catalog making it accessible through Azure AI Studio and Azure Machine Learning. Recently, Microsoft has launched a flagship model of Mistral AI. “We are excited to announce Mistral AI’s flagship commercial model, Mistral Large, available first on Azure AI and the Mistral AI platform, marking a noteworthy expansion of our offerings.” Mistral large is a general-purpose language model that has the ability to deliver on any text-based use case. This is possible because of the state-of-the-art reasoning and knowledge capabilities. This AI is an expert in code and mathematics and is able to process multiple documents in a single call. It also handles French, German, Spanish, and Italian along with English.
This addition of Mistral’s flagship model as a MaaS within Azure AI Studio and Azure Machine Learning has allowed customers to select from different state-of-the-art and open-source models for developing and deploying custom AI applications and has also made a way for AI-driven innovations.
Here are some of the customer experiences who have used Mistral AI’s Mistral Large.
Philippe Rambach, Chief AI Officer, Schneider Electric says “We have tested Mistral Large through the Azure AI Studio in a use case aimed at internal efficiency. The performance was comparable with state-of-the-art models with even better latency. We are looking forward to exploring further this technology in our business.”
Nacim Rahal, Senior Director, Data and AI, Doctolib said “After exploring Mistral Large during its early access period, we’ve been impressed by its performance on medical terminology. As we continue to innovate in healthcare, we’re open to collaborations that can help us and our partners grow together. Mistral AI represents an exciting opportunity for mutual advancement in artificial intelligence, both in France and internationally.”
Severine Gregoire, Head of Digital, Innovation and AI at CMA CGM says “The Mistral AI models have been crucial in enhancing productivity and collaboration at CMA CGM. Their advanced capabilities have significantly improved the performance of our internal personal assistant, MAIA. Employees are now able to quickly access and engage with information like never before. We are confident that Mistral AI on Azure is the right choice to support our employees and drive innovation across our organization.”
Microsoft is dedicated to supporting global AI innovation and growth by providing world-class data centre AI infrastructure and developing technology securely to offer individuals with skills they need to use AI effectively. This partnership is agreed on the commitment to provide safe AI systems and products. This is a step towards the ongoing efforts to enhance AI technology development and deliver value to customers. The integration to Azure AI Studio ensures that the customers can use Azure AI Content Safety which is responsible for further safety and security of the AI tools that are used by the customers.