AI FranceStartupsMistral AI announced in a blog post on Tuesday that it has launched a new free package that lets developers fine-tune and build test applications using the startup's AI models. The startup has also dramatically slashed the price for developers to access its AI models via API endpoints and added image processing capabilities to its free consumer AI chatbot, Le Chat.
Mistral has launched a free package through its API services platform, la Plateforme, that allows forDevelopersNo-cost experimentation, evaluation and prototyping. While production environment use may require upgrading to a paid commercial tier, this move certainly lowers the barrier to entry for developers. This trend is similar to the strategy of giants such as OpenAI and Google, reflecting the trend of commoditization of high-level large-scale language models (LLMs) in the developer world.
Additionally, Mistral has dramatically lowered the price of accessing its AI models through API endpoints.Mistral NeMo, Mistral Small, and Codestral have lowered their prices by more than 501 TP3T, and Mistral Large has reduced its price by 331 TP3T.This move directly challenges OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic, among other competitors, and is expected to spark a new round of price wars.
Mistral has introduced the first multimodal model, Pixtral12B, to its free consumer AI chatbot, le Chat, capable of processing both images and text. This feature upgrade rounds out Mistral's product line and helps appeal to a broader user base.
While Mistral touts its AI model as "open," by providing easy access to its platform services, the company is clearly hoping to keep users within its ecosystem, paving the way for future commercialization.