French AI company Mistral has launched Europe’s first reasoning model, using logical thinking to generate answers. With Magistral Small and Medium, the startup is trying to keep pace with its American and Chinese competitors.
Reasoning models use chain-of-thought techniques. This process generates answers with intermediate reasoning steps when solving complex problems. For Mistral, a shift away from traditional “scaling up” could offer an opportunity to catch up with competitors.
The company has distinguished itself by emphasizing its European roots and gaining support from President Emmanuel Macron. In addition, Mistral makes some of its models available open source, unlike the proprietary offerings from OpenAI or Google.
Two new models
Mistral is launching both an open-source Magistral Small model and a more powerful version called Magistral Medium for business customers. “The best human thinking isn’t linear – it weaves through logic, insight, uncertainty, and discovery. Reasoning language models have enabled us to augment and delegate complex thinking and deep understanding to AI,” Mistral states.
Reasoning models could be a step forward in improving AI capabilities. The traditional approach of building ever larger language models by adding more data and computing power is beginning to reach its limits.
Mistral Small is available for download on the Hugging Face platform and can reason in languages such as English, French, Spanish, Arabic, and simplified Chinese. Mistral is seen as Europe’s best chance at a home-grown AI competitor, but it lags in market share and revenue compared to the dominant players.