Greetings from Austin, TX, where the weather is beautiful, the BBQ is exceptional, and I'm going to spend the day talking about building the first synthetic employee for one of my favorite multinational clients.
In the news: Paris-based startup Mistral has unveiled Mistral Large, a new open source AI model that builds on its initial offering, Mistral 7B. Designed for developers, Mistral Large distinguishes itself with exceptional reasoning skills and proficiency in code and mathematics. The model is multilingual and is fluent English, French, German, Spanish, and Italian.
Mistral is also introducing "Le Chat," a multilingual conversational assistant. This tool, currently in beta for early adopters, promises to enhance user interaction with Mistral's AI models, indicating a broader application scope for enterprises.
Mistral's journey from a record-breaking €105 million seed funding to a staggering €2 billion valuation within months speaks volumes about its growth trajectory and the market's confidence in its potential. Alongside Europe's leading AI innovators (like Aleph Alpha and Silo AI), Mistral is carving out a significant niche for itself, offering a compelling alternative to established models like ChatGPT.
Mistral’s co-founder and CEO Arthur Mensch said, "This is a significant milestone for us, as the unparalleled performance of this multilingual model will continue to push the boundaries of what is possible with frontier AI."
It may be much more than that, though, as Mistral has teamed up with Microsoft. Through this partnership, Azure becomes Mistral's first reselling partner, allowing the company to leverage Microsoft's cloud infrastructure and sales reach to distribute its commercial conversational AI products.
For Microsoft, this may be a stroke of strategic brilliance. They invested about $13 billion into OpenAI, but Sam is no longer the only guy in town with a compelling LLM. Is Satya hedging his bet, or is Microsoft going to start offering a wide range of LLMs to its Azure clients? It's a trick question.
As always your thoughts and comments are both welcome and encouraged. Just reply to this email. -s sp@shellypalmer.com
P.S. Tomorrow (Wednesday, Feb. 28), I'm moderating a panel at the inaugural HR Innovators event with Peter Navin (Chief People Officer, United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee [USOPC]) and Bettina Deynes (Global Chief Human Resources Officer, Carnival Corporation). This is the first in a series of conferences and events focused on the evolving role of the CHRO. If you are investing in human capital and striving to optimize organizational design to drive growth, request your invitation here.
P.P.S. My Sunday blog asked the question, "Is Your Business Ready for AI?" Getting to the answer is more interesting than you think.
ABOUT SHELLY PALMER
Shelly Palmer is the Professor of Advanced Media in Residence at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and CEO of The Palmer Group, a consulting practice that helps Fortune 500 companies with technology, media and marketing. Named LinkedIn’s “Top Voice in Technology,” he covers tech and business for Good Day New York, is a regular commentator on CNN and writes a popular daily business blog. He's a bestselling author, and the creator of the popular, free online course, Generative AI for Execs. Follow @shellypalmer or visit shellypalmer.com.
