Mistral AI just hit 1 million downloads for its AI chat assistant Le Chat on iOS and Android in two weeks. The French startup’s app snagged the top spot for free downloads on the iOS App Store in France.
This surge follows a major update in July 2025 that added “deep research” mode, multilingual reasoning, and advanced image editing. Plus, a new Projects feature lets users organize chats and documents.
The company pitches Le Chat as a ChatGPT rival, with French president Emmanuel Macron even urging people to choose it over OpenAI’s offering. 
Mistral AI backs this with a hefty lineup of AI models:
- Mistral Large 2, their main large language model
- Pixtral Large, a multimodal model from 2024
- Magistral reasoning models launched June 2025
- Mistral Medium 3 for coding and STEM tasks
- Voxtral, their open source audio AI released July 2025
- Devstral, an Apache 2.0 licensed AI coding model
- Codestral, an earlier code model banned for commercial use
- “Les Ministraux” optimized for edge devices like phones
- Mistral Saba for Arabic language
The startup also launched Mistral OCR in March 2025, which turns PDFs into text files for easier AI analysis. In May, it rolled out an Agents API aimed at enterprise use cases, and in June released Mistral Code, a vibe coding client to take on GitHub Copilot and others.
Founders Arthur Mensch (ex-DeepMind), Timothée Lacroix, and Guillaume Lample (both ex-Meta) lead Mistral with strong ties to Paris’s AI scene. The company raised around $1.04 billion (€1 billion) by early 2025, including a $6 billion valuation round in mid-2024 led by General Catalyst, Cisco, and Nvidia.
Microsoft made a €15 million investment in 2024 tied to a distribution deal via Azure. Other major partnerships include:
- French Army and job agency
- Luxembourg government
- Shipping giant CMA CGM
- German defense startup Helsing
- IBM, Orange, and Stellantis automaker
Mistral is also partnering with UAE’s MGX, Nvidia, and France’s Bpifrance on an AI Campus near Paris. In June 2025, it announced Mistral Compute, a new Nvidia-powered cloud platform for AI slated for 2026 launch. Macron called it a “historic” partnership.
The startup’s free models come with Apache 2.0 license access, but premier models don’t share commercial weights openly. Le Chat Pro launched at $14.99/month in February 2025 to start generating revenue from users, alongside API licensing for businesses.
CEO Arthur Mensch shot down buyout rumors at Davos 2025:
“Of course, [an IPO is] the plan.”
Mistral wants to scale revenue to justify its valuation and maintain independence, despite persistent acquisition whispers, including Apple speculation.
Mensch also signed a July 2025 letter calling for a two-year pause on the EU’s AI Act enforcement — but Brussels is sticking to its schedule.
Mistral AI is staking its claim as Europe’s top AI startup, trying to go head-to-head with OpenAI while pushing for openness and green AI. The next big test: turning downloads and buzz into sustainable revenue.
