Mistral AI Launches Mistral 3: Frontier Model and Small Ones for Edge Devices
French startup Mistral AI released its Mistral 3 family on Tuesday. It includes a large frontier model called Mistral Large 3 and nine smaller Ministral 3 models. These open-weight models aim at enterprise tasks, robotics, and offline use on devices like laptops or drones. VentureBeat and TechCrunch reported the launch details first.
Mistral Large 3 Details
Mistral Large 3 packs multimodal and multilingual skills into one model. It uses a granular Mixture of Experts setup with 41 billion active parameters and 675 billion total parameters. That supports a 256,000-token context window for handling long documents or agent workflows. Mistral says it matches closed models like OpenAI’s GPT-4o or Google’s Gemini 2 in areas like coding, content creation, and analysis. CNET points out its focus on non-English languages through more diverse training data.
Ministral 3: Nine Small, Efficient Options
The Ministral 3 lineup covers three sizes—3 billion, 8 billion, and 14 billion parameters—each with three variants:
- Base: Pre-trained foundation for custom tweaks.
- Instruct: Tuned for chat and assistant tasks.
- Reasoning: Built for logic and analysis, with extra processing time per query.
All handle vision, 128,000- to 256,000-token contexts, and multiple languages. They run on a single GPU, fitting robots, cars, phones, or laptops without internet. Guillaume Lample, Mistral co-founder and chief scientist, told TechCrunch that fine-tuned small models often beat large closed ones for specific enterprise jobs because they’re faster and cheaper (ZDNET).
Mistral’s Push Against Big Tech
Mistral, started in 2023 by ex-DeepMind and Meta researchers, has raised about $2.7 billion total at a $13.7 billion valuation, per TechCrunch. A September round brought in 1.7 billion euros, pushing valuation to 11.7 billion euros, with big checks from ASML (1.3 billion euros) and Nvidia, according to CNBC and Financial Times.
The company now focuses on deals like Monday’s contract with HSBC for financial analysis and translation. It’s also partnering on robotics with Singapore’s HTX agency, drone tech with Helsing, and in-car AI with Stellantis. Lample stressed to CNET that open models like these make AI reachable for everyone, even offline.
