Building European alternatives, however, poses another challenge: convincing customers to use them when cheaper Chinese models can match or outperform their European rivals.

That tension has already surfaced for Mistral. German search engine Ecosia stopped using its models after concluding they did not meet its needs. Its CEO said that switching to Chinese models cut costs by half while improving overall performance.

Asked whether companies could be expected to compromise on price or performance for the sake of sovereignty, Mensch rejected the premise.

“There’s no such thing as a compromise in between competitiveness and quality and sovereignty,” he said.

Mensch did not directly address Ecosia’s experience. Instead, he argued that Mistral doesn’t need to lead on every benchmark, pointing to areas such as cybersecurity and geospatial imaging where he said its new Large 4 model outperforms Chinese open-weight rivals. 

He said Mistral deliberately focused on areas where it saw strong demand. 

“The quality of our technology finds a market everywhere outside of Europe, including in the U.S.,” he said. “Mistral Large 4 was a long-awaited release. It puts us very much back in the race.”