French startup Mistral launches chatbot for companies, triples revenue in 100 days

By Supantha Mukherjee

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) -Mistral AI on Wednesday launched its Le Chat chatbot for corporate use, and its CEO said the French startup has tripled its revenue in the last 100 days, with demand coming particularly from outside the United States.

Paris-based Mistral AI, founded two years ago, launched the open source version of its Le Chat assistant in February. The enterprise version now connects with content management systems such as Microsoft's SharePoint and Google Drive.

"In the last 100 days we have tripled our business, in particular in Europe and outside of the U.S.," CEO Arthur Mensch told journalists.

"We've been... growing in the U.S. quite fast as well," Mensch said.

Mistral, which is valued at $6 billion, does not publicly disclose its revenue, but was reported by one trade publication to have revenue of $30 million last year.

Last month, U.S. President Donald Trump completed 100 days in office in his second term, which has been marked by a strained relationship with Europe due to his trade policies and controversial diplomatic actions.

Mistral is operating its own compute capabilities and reducing its dependency on cloud providers, allowing the company to offer customers a service that does not depend on the U.S. companies, Mensch said.

A company can also deploy Le Chat on its own cloud infrastructure without needing Mistral to manage its data.

(Reporting by Supantha Mukherjee in Stockholm; Editing by Jan Harvey)