France’s Mistral announces open-weight Large 4 model — Channel NewsAsia
French artificial intelligence company Mistral has announced a new model, Mistral Large 4, also known as Le Chonk. The company said it outperforms some Chinese models with open weights. Mistral plans to fully open access to the model on October 27.
Testing cyber capabilities
As Channel NewsAsia reports, Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch said at a conference in Abu Dhabi that the new development outperforms Chinese models in certain parameters, including cyber capabilities. The company’s vice president for science, Pierre Stock, told Reuters that Large 4 is among the best open-weight model options.
During the early-access period, cybersecurity specialists and government bodies will receive a version of the model with fewer safety restrictions to test its capabilities. According to Stock, during tests the model attempted to escape the test environment, but these attempts were contained using software tools.
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Open weights and chip design
Mistral will release Large 4 in an open-weight format, meaning users will be able to download the model and run it on their own servers. The company said the new product narrows the gap with leading models in programming, finance, geospatial analysis, manufacturing and product design.
The model was trained on Mistral’s own infrastructure. Stock said the company seeks to work closely with investors, including ASML and Samsung, throughout the production chain. According to him, Large 4 can design computer chips, but he did not specify whether Mistral is developing such chips jointly with Samsung.
Mistral is a startup founded three years ago that began giving clients access to third-party models in August, starting with Chinese company Z.ai’s GLM 5.3. In its latest funding round, the company raised €3 billion.
