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Don't sleep on Mistral. Highly underrated as a general service LLM. Cheaper, too. Their emphasis on bespoke modelling over generalized megaliths will pay off. T
by ogou 7mo ago
Don't sleep on Mistral. Highly underrated as a general service LLM. Cheaper, too. Their emphasis on bespoke modelling over generalized megaliths will pay off. There are all kinds of specialized datasets and restricted access stores that can benefit from their approach. Especially in highly regulated EU.
Not everyone is obsessed with code generation. There is a whole world out there.
- haraldooo 7mo agoI agree. Just started using it. Can you give some examples of fields you maybe even prefer Mistral?
- isodev 7mo agoIndeed, but even for coding use cases, Vibe is more of a focused “refactor/ write this function” aid than “write me an app” and it can work locally. For me that’s a lot more valuable as an accelerator to my workflow where the developer stays in control and fully involved in the process.
- srivmo 7mo ago> Their emphasis on bespoke modelling over generalized megaliths will pay off. Isn't the entire deal with LLMs that they are trained as megaliths? How can bespoke modelling overcome the treasure trove of knowledge that megaliths can generically bring in, even in bespoke scenarios?
- lelanthran 7mo ago> Isn't the entire deal with LLMs that they are trained as megaliths? How can bespoke modelling overcome the treasure trove of knowledge that megaliths can generically bring in, even in bespoke scenarios? Think of it as a base model (the megalith) which then has the weights adjusted towards a specific use-case (SAP, for example).
- wodenokoto 7mo agoChatGPT is already a small agent that receives your message and decides which agent needs to respond. Within those, agents can have sub agents (like when it does research). When generating images most services will have a small agent that rewrites your request and hands it off to the generative image model. So from the treasure trove point of view, optimized agents have their place. From companies building pipelines, they also have their place.
- TeMPOraL 7mo ago> ChatGPT is already a small agent that receives your message and decides which agent needs to respond. Right, but this was done to value-optimize the product, i.e. try to always give you the shittiest (cheapest) model you can bear, because otherwise people would always choose the smartest (most expensive) model for any query. Taking away the model choice from the user introduces a lot of ways to cut down costs, but one thing it does not do is make the product give users better/more reliable answers.
- Stromgren 7mo agoAgreed. I’ve used their platform to train smaller, specialized models. Something I could have done in Codelab or some other tool, but their platform allows me to just upload a training set and as soon as it finishes I have a hosted model available at an endpoint. It obviously has some constraints compared to running the training yourself, but it also opens up the opportunity to way more people.
- umeridrisi 7mo agoIs this the best Grok alternative?
- spiderfarmer 7mo agoAny model is.
- grosswait 7mo agoThis sounds like an ideology based reply. Grok is underrated and I think has a better chance of long term success than most. The current growth strategy means (for me) their chat harness is not up to par for serious work. Their API is consistently among the most used on OpenRouter. While I can’t vouch for it myself, I think this is a decent proxy for capability. You can definitely see glimmers of greatness in their chat interface, it just feels like the system prompts are focused on something that doesn’t interest me.
- butILoveLife 7mo agoGrok is not SOTA, but its so obviously better than Mistral. Mistral is just some European patriotism or something. Grok is nice for asking morally gray questions. ChatGPT will lie in these cases.
- Duwensatzaj 7mo agoWhat lies have you seen? ChatGPT is the most censored one, but I’ve only seen rejections, not lies. My other complaint is that ChatGPT ends every response with a teaser to ask more questions.
- butILoveLife 7mo agoAsk game theory questions with real humans where its best to defect.
- spiderfarmer 7mo ago
- spiderfarmer 7mo agoYes, since it's not American, it will be the de-facto choice for most big European companies.
- jstummbillig 7mo agoWhy would that be? Most big EU companies use ms teams or google workspace, for example.
- schubidubiduba 7mo agoThey use those because the decision to use them was made years ago. Things have changed since then
- utopiah 7mo agoI want to believe... but I also need proofs of that "trend", any reference I could read on please?
- AdamN 7mo agoIt's definitely a topic of conversation in Reddit, etc... However I agree that the push to reduce US dependence by EU companies (and countries) is hampered by the fact that US stuff is already embedded (Microsoft but also Google, etc...) and that many of these companies are transnational anyway (very few European companies are solely inside the EU) and finally and most importantly just about every company will choose the option that does the job best for the right price (sovereignty is a distant second for most decision makers).
- spiderfarmer 7mo agoWhile few companies announce this publicly, I know from personal experience with corporate clients that many companies are preparing for Trump to use Big Tech as a bargaining chip. And they should. Because the US is not behaving rationally at all. https://nltimes.nl/2026/02/10/rabobank-ing-abn-amro-seek-european-alternatives-us-technology https://nltimes.nl/2026/02/10/rabobank-ing-abn-amro-seek-eur... https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/13/gartner_cio_cloud_sovereignty/ https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/13/gartner_cio_cloud_sov... https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/europe-zoom-teams-france-us-b2913584.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/europe-zoom-... https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/commentary/article-france-is-ditching-american-tech-when-will-canada/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/commentary/article-... https://sherwood.news/tech/europe-wants-to-break-up-with-us-tech-heres-how-it-plans-on-doing-that/ https://sherwood.news/tech/europe-wants-to-break-up-with-us-...
- lelanthran 7mo agoI also think that this is the best approach for businesses wanting to adopt AI to automate, streamline, etc their business. The problem they have is that this is not a moat - their approach is easily reproducible. If they can pull ahead in having the most number of pre-trained models (one for this ERP, one for that CRM, etc) and then being able to close sales to companies using these products and sell them on post-trained (give us your specific ERP customisations and we'll give you access to a model that is tailored to your business), then THAT is a moat. But they need to do this without fanfare. Just close sales, and keep closing, basically. After all, even if other AI providers copy the process, the moat would already have been established for Mistral.
- Lapel2742 7mo ago> The problem they have is that this is not a moat - their approach is easily reproducible. My 2ct: Currently the moat may be that they are not US-American which is not reproducible by any of the US alternatives.
- Bombthecat 7mo agoMeh, I feel like we are in the "cloud is bad phase" all over again. Companies will use US ai models without issues in a few years.
- drstewart 7mo agoThis moat doesn't seem to be much of a moat considering a non-US model doesn't even crack the top 5 by usage - except DeepSeek, which would be a strange choice for Europeans looking for data sovereignty.
- Lapel2742 7mo ago> considering a non-US model doesn't even crack the top 5 by usage How do you measure "usage" in an enterprise/commercial context where no data on usage is available to you? I don't expect Mistral AI to make it's money on OpenRouter.
- 7mo ago
- butILoveLife 7mo agoIf you couldn't use the words Europe to describe why you'd chose Mistral, you'd have no good reasons to choose Mistral. Its just not good. Its bottom floor for LLMs.
- danelski 7mo ago> Its bottom floor for LLMs. What? That's just demonstrably false. The market doesn't consist of 5 providers.
- butILoveLife 7mo agoYou know about LMarena? I just looked it up, Mistral is number 59 on the list. Free Chinese models are better than it.
- danelski 7mo agoThat's one of the possible benchmarks, not the only one. Being 59th there, on a list enriched with every variation of Model_Name X.Y (March 2025 Preview) Pro-Thinking, translates to being in the top 10 providers worldwide which is a very interesting mark of failure considering that coincidentally they're also number 1 from their economic area. If you don't know why the last part is important, go read some news.
- butILoveLife 7mo ago[dead]
- Forgeties79 7mo agoI use a pretty lightweight local Mistral model in LM studio for both creative and technical writing/iterating and it’s fantastic.
- Bombthecat 7mo agoThe companies I work want onprem models, and no Chinese ones. Does mistral support onprem? ( For a price)
- rldjbpin 7mo ago> Not everyone is obsessed with code generation. They (still) are. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47404796 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47404796