European AI must not rely on Mistral alone, French minister warns

French Economy Minister Roland Lescure warned that European AI cannot rely solely on French company Mistral, stating "if European AI comes down to Mistral, we are lost." He emphasized the need to develop an entire ecosystem rather than concentrating efforts. Speaking in San Francisco during a Silicon Valley visit, Lescure said "we cannot put all our eggs in one basket." He met with investors and AI companies including OpenAI and Stripe, while declining to recommend whether Mistral should focus on advanced models or computing infrastructure. Mistral, valued at nearly 12 billion euros with indirect state backing via Bpifrance, opened its first French data center and signed a commercial deal with Microsoft. Lescure called US unpredictability a risk, citing Washington's June move forcing Anthropic to restrict foreign access to its most powerful models.