French AI startup Mistral has signed a multi-million-euro agreement with Agence France-Presse or AFP.
What Happened: The deal, announced on Thursday, will see over 2,000 AFP articles in six languages incorporated into Mistral’s chatbot, Le Chat, daily.
Arthur Mensch, co-founder and CEO of Mistral, stressed the importance of such agreements for delivering well-grounded information.
Fabrice Fries, CEO of AFP, underscored the deal as a testament to Mistral’s dedication to independent, fact-based journalism.
He told the Financial Times that, unlike similar agreements that companies like OpenAI have struck with other media groups, this is not a one-off settlement for data.
“‘Free speech' is being weaponized against Europe to a great extent and there is this offensive by Big Tech on European regulation,” he said, adding, “Precisely this kind of deal, in the current context, shows that an AI player has bet on independent, fact-based professional journalism.”
Why It Matters: AFP’s collaboration with Mistral also aims to offset revenue losses as its fact-checking contract with Meta winds down, the report noted.
AFP generated about €20 million (approximately $20.57 million) in 2024 from tech platforms, including fact-checking and content licensing deals.
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The partnership comes as Meta Platforms Inc. META and Elon Musk’s X, formerly Twitter, have reduced content moderation in favor of “free speech.”
Earlier this week, Alphabet Inc.'s GOOG GOOGL Google also expanded its collaboration with the Associated Press to improve its Gemini app.
Last year, Mistral secured $645 million in funding, achieving a valuation of $6 billion. This positioned it as Europe’s leading AI company and the sole start-up on the continent developing large language models to compete with industry giants like OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI.
Mistral AI was established in April 2023 by ex-engineers from Google DeepMind and Meta. Microsoft Corp. MSFT also has a minor stake in the company.
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