> Man, a lot of this discussion sounds like people cheering for the last kid crossing the finish line.

Sometimes it's ok to cheer for the last kid crossing the finish line because they're actually running a totally different race, and winning might look completely different.

When I look at what Mistral does vs other organizations I'm impressed:

https://isaiprofitable.com/

They aren't profitable yet, but they're a lot closer than most and they're doing a hell of a lot with very little.

Pointless racing story:

I was in high school track with a really tough guy who was just not a runner. We went to a pretty messed up high school and if you screwed around in track practice sometimes the coach would make you run a crap race at the next meet, like steeplechase or hurdles. Well this guy and a few others screwed up and coach made them all run hurdles at a meet.

He hooked every single one and fell on his face. Every time he got back up and kept on running. By the time he hit the finish line his knees were bleeding halfway down to his ankles. We cheered like hell and he was smiling ear to ear.

Coach quit punishing us with races after that.

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manlymuppet 17 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Mistral is more profitable as a general percentage sure, but take their overall revenue: about $400 million annually.

Good, until you compare that to OpenAI’s behemoth $70 billion.

Sure OpenAI has much higher operating expenses, but which position would you rather be in? If OpenAI cut off all training and R&D tomorrow, would their 1 billion users simply vanish? Could Mistral ever realistically acquire 1 billion users?

Point being that profitable isn’t telling the whole story. And I don’t know if lack of resources is a great excuse, when Chinese labs are doing more with less, and it’s ultimately up to every competitor to win as best they can, regardless of their circumstances.

Great story you told, though. My old track coach was also an asshole, but of the more lovable variety.

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autuni 15 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I think right now it should definitely be a race to profitability, because revenue will not save you from unsustainable finances, no matter how large the values are.

I think OpenAI is currently far enough ahead that they could just cut training and R&D for a while (maybe even 1-2 years) and rake in some money before they'd need to start again, but if a smaller company finds a way to keep doing R&D while also being profitable, it doesn't matter if they're a little behind in quality, they will win in the long term.

	▲	troyvit 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> I think right now it should definitely be a race to profitability, I haven't been listening too closely, but this is the first realistic mention I've seen that actually says what the "AI race" is or should be about.

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mrheosuper 16 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

>when Chinese labs are doing more with less

I need a source for this. AFAIK, the government heavily subsidize those labs.

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seizethecheese a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I read that site quite differently from you. You seem to be analyzing absolute differences but ROI is really about ratio of spending to revenue.

It looks like Mistral is middle of the pack, behind Anthropic and ahead of OpenAI on that front. All of those labs are way "ahead" of the cloud providers, but those providers are building infrastructure, not just training models, so it's not apples to apples.

	▲	troyvit a day ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah that's a good point. The numbers are smaller and I was looking at it absolutely. Speaking from an absolute perspective I do think they are doing more with their money than either Anthropic or OpenAI.

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amunozo 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Proportionally to income, Anthropic revenue is two thirds of its expenses, Mistral is a half, and OpenAI a little bit than a half. They aren't that different.

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onel 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

This is a great story. I don't think we should expect someone to win in the first races they participate. There are football teams that never win the championship and they always play and strive to be better. Mistral it's definitely improving with each release and props to them for releasing open models