The multi-year partnership between the two companies will provide Mistral AI with access to Microsoft Azure’s AI infrastructure to help develop next generation LLMs.

As part of the arrangement, Mistral AI’s flagship commercial model, Mistral Large, will be made available first on Azure AI and the Mistral AI platforms.

Mistral Large is a general-purpose language model focused on text-based use cases, and able to handle English, French, German, Spanish and Italian.

The agreement will also help Mistral unlock new commercial opportunities, expand to global markets and foster ongoing research collaboration.

Microsoft’s partnership with Mistral AI is focused on three core areas, including supercomputing infrastructure, specifically in helping Mistral AI with Azure AI.

Other areas include AI research and development, such as exploring collaboration around training purpose-specific models for select customers, including European public sector workloads.

Finally, Microsoft and Mistral AI will make Mistral AI’s premium models available to customers through the models as a service (MaaS) in the Azure AI Studio and Azure Machine Learning model catalogue.

Azure’s AI-optimised infrastructure and capabilities will offer Mistral AI additional opportunities to promote, sell and distribute its models to Microsoft customers worldwide.

Arthur Mensch, chief executive officer at Mistral AI, said: “We are thrilled to embark on this partnership with Microsoft. With Azure’s cutting-edge AI infrastructure, we are reaching a new milestone in our expansion propelling our innovative research and practical applications to new customers everywhere.

“Together, we are committed to driving impactful progress in the AI industry and delivering unparalleled value to our customers and partners globally.”