French AI company Mistral, supported by Microsoft, is set to launch its inaugural reasoning model on Tuesday, positioning it as a competitor to offerings from OpenAI and China’s DeepSeek.
During a fireside chat at London Tech Week, Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch told CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal, “We’re rolling out our new reasoning model in a few hours. It’s highly competitive with others and uniquely capable of reasoning in multiple languages.”
Reasoning models are designed to tackle complex tasks through step-by-step logical processes. Mensch highlighted that Mistral’s model excels in mathematics and coding.
Current reasoning models on the market include OpenAI’s o1, integrated into ChatGPT last year, and DeepSeek’s R1. Mistral, known for its open-weight large language models, makes its model parameters publicly available. This allows developers to access and tweak the model’s core knowledge, reducing the time and cost of building systems from the ground up.
Mensch emphasized that Mistral’s Magistral reasoning model stands out for its ability to reason in European languages. “While U.S. models typically reason in English and Chinese models in Chinese, our model focuses on European languages,” he said, noting plans to support additional languages in the future.
Earlier this year, DeepSeek’s R1 model made waves in the AI community and global markets, offering performance comparable to OpenAI’s o1 at a lower cost.
