Mistral Is in the Right Place at the Right Time

In June, the Trump administration placed restrictions on the distribution of models from Anthropic and OpenAI, giving Europe a glimpse of an unwelcome future in which its access to bleeding-edge AI could be suddenly revoked. A few weeks later, one of OpenAI’s models broke loose from a testing sandbox and hacked multiple companies; Anthropic then revealed that its models had engaged in similar behavior. The incidents revived a long-running debate over safety risks tied to proprietary, closed-weight models, whose inner-workings are a closely guarded secret.