While I associate Mistral with LLMs, the electric design automation software used for planning and designing chips already uses machine learning/reinforcement learning for some approaches. AI could play an even greater role in chip design in the future.

Llms are fundamentally different algorithms and problem space to IC design and production. Why would mistral be helpful?

I dont see how even the algorithms involved translate well. IC design is closer to a physics simulator connected to a heuristic optimizer. Mabie some ideas from alfageometry or alfafold could be applied, but thats not the kind of research mistral is doing.

And there are big players with existing expertise in the IC design space. Why not just fund them to do more research?