xAI has a lot of compute. Deepseek also has a lot, not as much though. But this is changing with their new 160k huawei ascend datacenter in inner mongolia.

The lack of compute is not really attributable in that sense to mistral. First of all it needs general investor and government willingness, which is easier in a larger economy like the US or China.

Second, you need widespread usage of your paid inference service for two reasons: one it pays off your compute cost, and two it speeds up the improvement process.

The vast majority of deepseeks paid customers are within china itself (since openai and anthropic services are not reachable from china) which gives it a market. But for someone in france, there is no reason to use a structurally slower developing model from mistral compared to using one from openai...except when data guarantees are needed, hence the landing page focus on sovereignty. As far as the dual use aspect goes, a model like this is more than enough, so the government will be happy.