A French Revolution in AI: Mistral AI Launches ‘Le Chat’ Chatbot

Speed is everything in a global tech race. Much like the space race, countries around the world are now battling to reach the top when it comes to technological innovations. However, this time it’s a race to Artificial Intelligence (AI). French company, Mistral AI, released its AI assistant chatbot, ‘Le Chat’ on February 6th with the claim that it’s the world’s fastest chatbot – delivering 1,000 words per second. In this blog, we take a closer look at the Le Chat AI platform and how it works while also exploring how it compares against the growing number of AI technologies already on the market.

The release of the Le Chat chatbot comes hot on the heels of China releasing its DeepSeek AI platform - which shook the US stock market and made headlines across the world. It also enters the AI market at a volatile stage where OpenAI has mostly dominated while several competitors – including Google and Meta – have been vying for the top. Now, let’s learn more about the Le Chat chatbot.

What Is Le Chat?

Mistral AI, a French start-up company, built the Le Chat AI assistant to challenge its fellow open-source AI competitors in the market. The computer power behind the chatbot has been provided by Cerebras Systems, an artificial intelligence chip firm backed by UAE tech conglomerate G42.

The Le Chat chatbot was introduced on X as “your ultimate AI sidekick for life and work” and went live on the web and mobile. According to the Mistral press release by Mistral, Le Chat can reason, reflect, and respond faster than any other chat assistant. As for its target audience, Mistral has maintained that Le Chat is built to “transform complex tasks into achievable outcomes with AI that speak every professional language. Whether you're analyzing data, writing code, or creating content.” Users can access cross-domain expertise through intuitive interfaces designed for both technical and non-technical users.

According to Mistral, Le Chat is a comprehensive AI assistant for your life and work. It’s a platform where users can access the latest news, plan everyday life, track projects, upload and summarize documents, and more. The chatbot has already garnered support across most of Europe and has been even toted by President Emmanuel Macron several times as he's encouraged citizens to download the app – stating that “it’s the French language model and the European benchmark” that assists him every day. Mistral AI has since launched the Le Chat app for free on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. Now, let’s get more into what the chatbot can do by going over some of its features and functions.

Le Chat Key Features and Functions

Much like every other AI model on the market today, Le Chat offers limited web browsing, data analysis, file uploads, and image generation. A key selling point for the chatbot, however, is its impressive speed at getting these results. In partnership with Mistral, Cerebras Systems powers Le Chat’s new Flash Answers feature that provides instant responses to user queries – all at a speed of approximately 1,000 words per second.

According to the company, Le Chat is 10 times faster than popular models such as ChatGPT 4o, Sonnet 3.5, and DeepSeek R1 – ultimately making it the world’s fastest AI assistant. In the example below, Mistral Le Chat completes a coding prompt instantly while ChatGPT and Claude AI assistants take much longer to finish.

Sourced from Cerebras Systems

Cerebras Systems uses fast inference to improve the user experience for chat and code generation – which the company states are two of the most popular use cases today. Inference in AI refers to training a machine learning model to draw conclusions from new data. For example, a self-driving car would use inference to identify a road sign on a road it’s never driven on before.

Cerebras' chief executive Andrew Feldman stated that the speed of delivering answers to users has become more of a priority to keep up with rival companies. "You want better answers. And to get better answers, you need more computing at inference time," Feldman told reporters. "It was our first announced major win at a tier-one model maker, and so we're really proud of that."

Le Chat is also equipped for advanced document processing with Optical Character Recognition (OCR) capabilities, sophisticated code interpretation features, and state-of-the-art image generation powered by Black Forest Labs Flux Ultra. The platform's Mistral Large model also demonstrates fluency in French, English, German, Spanish, and Italian. Le Chat also prides itself on being a strong global contributor to open-source AI and AI policies.

The chatbot combines pre-trained knowledge of Mistral models with recent information balanced across web searches, robust journalism, social media, and multiple other sources to provide nuanced, evidence-based responses. News agency, Agence France-Presse (AFP), has also signed a deal that allows Le Chat to use reports to respond to users' requests. The chatbot will draw on the agency's text archives going back to 1983 but has no access to AFP's photo, video, or infographics production. The co-founder stated that where users' questions "require verified information, AFP will provide" the inputs, while more generalized prompts will be sourced from the web.

Another key feature of Le Chat is its image generation capabilities powered by Black Forest Labs Flux Ultra – which is currently the leading image generation model. Le Chat can seamlessly generate anything you can imagine - from photorealistic images to shareable content and corporate creatives.

Sourced from Mistral

Another goal for Mistral AI was to create a platform that would provide coding assistance across 80+ languages. For software developers, Le Chat comes with advanced coding capabilities and improved code generation and completion. Le Chat is already used by thousands of developers today for debugging, scripting, testing, code optimization, and demoing. The company is also introducing a code interpreter in Le Chat which enables users to perform sandboxed code execution, scientific analysis, create visualizations, and run simulations. This feature will make the chatbot a practical tool for validating algorithms and exploring data insights.

Sourced from Mistral

Looking to the future, Mistral is further planning to introduce an opt-in feature that helps Le Chat learn and remember more about you and your preferences. The feature called ‘Memories’ will allow the chatbot to personalize learning, track progress, and rediscover conversations and insights. These bells and whistles are all incredibly fun to play with but now let’s take a look at what they might cost for the average user.

Le Chat Available Versions and Pricing Tiers

Mistral’s Le Chat AI assistant offers a four-tier price plan that suits the needs of almost every user. This table shows the respective price tiers along with what each tier provides in terms of features and functions:

Mistral AI's Le Chat Key Events and Milestones

The creation of Le Chat began with the founding of Mistral AI in 2023 and shot to prominence as a company devoted to creating affordable and reliable AI solutions that would rival those emerging in the West. Mistral AI was founded in April of 2023 by former Google DeepMind and Meta AI experts Arthur Mensch, Guillaume Lample, and Timothée Lacroix.

By June 2024, Mistral AI had become Europe's most significant AI startup outside the San Francisco Bay Area. The company's journey exemplified the rapid evolution of AI technology, with a strong commitment to open, portable, and customizable solutions. The French startup admittedly made headlines before even launching with a record-setting seed funding round of US$ 640 million which it used to quietly train and release a mix of open-source and proprietary models for consumers and enterprises. Getting funding from Microsoft and securing key collaborations with NVIDIA, Mistral quickly became a big name in the AI market.

In January 2025, Agence France-Presse (AFP) entered a contract with Mistral AI that allowed the chatbot to draw on the news agency's articles to formulate responses. On the 6th of February, Le Chat was finally introduced to the world. Mistral AI CEO and co-founder Arthur Mensch told Reuters that the French and the whole world are now realizing that European players count and that they provide cutting-edge technology. Now, let’s take a look at how the launch of the French chatbot caused ripples in the global AI market.

Le Chat in the Global AI Market

As mentioned before, the AI market is in a very volatile space where companies are racing to evolve their technologies and become more efficient, affordable, and dependable. However, the consensus in the market itself is that competition is not only invited – but encouraged. The AI industry thrives off innovation and there’s no better way to innovate than to learn from your peers.

Just before the launch of Le Chat, the AI market was in a frenzy following the massive debut of China’s DeepSeek AI platform. US tech giants fell heavily in the stock market when DeepSeek revealed how much more cost-efficient and evolved it was in comparison to its Western competitors. However, DeepSeek also came under fire from many in the US regarding privacy policies and user data storage concerns. While it is justifiable to chalk those concerns up to a global superpower shirking in the face of competition, it’s also important to remember that every AI platform came under a certain amount of scrutiny as well.

Upon its release in 2022, ChatGPT also took the world by storm and OpenAI dealt with a fair share of criticism as well. One of the main points of concern was that ChatGPT would be used to enable cyber-attacks. The cybersecurity concerns with ChatGPT were then amplified and extended to every emerging AI platform – and rightfully so. Research indicated that threat actors had begun to use ChatGPT and even DeepSeek to generate malware , inquire about cyber-attack techniques, and more. Since then, OpenAI and other companies have invested in tighter security boundaries to prevent the misuse of the platforms.

However, despite the dangers involved, AI continues to grow rapidly across the world and Le Chat is eager to keep going. Co-founder, Mensch, told the media that Mistral AI is managing to train its models more efficiently than DeepSeek – stating that there are very specific mathematical facets that the company has learned and that they are “keen to contribute again to the progress that will be made on top of DeepSeek."

Mensch also highlighted a need for a European alternative to Chinese and American AI platforms, saying that his ultimate goal was to make AI "more open and more accessible to everyone". The launch of Le Chat was also planned well as it coincided with the AI summit in Paris where global tech luminaries, business leaders, and politicians gathered to discuss AI policies and innovations. To further elaborate, we can now compare the performance of DeepSeek and ChatGPT to that of the French newcomer.

How Does Le Chat Compare to DeepSeek and ChatGPT?

While all these AI models are evolving and constantly becoming more efficient at their jobs, it would be amiss to compare them as they stand on the market today. A key selling point for Le Chat has been its speed over its competitors – a point that was put to the test by Analytics India Mag . The publication conducted a real-time test of some of the leading models - expecting them to solve a Chemistry problem. Le Chat returned the output in less than 4 seconds three of six times the model was tested.

Sourced from AIM

While this may seem like an easy win, it’s crucial to know that Reasoning models – like DeepSeek R1 – will use a lengthy chain of thought and prioritize the accuracy of the answer before speed. This was proven by DeepSeek-R1 taking the longest to find a conclusion.

TechRadar also put Le Chat up against ChatGPT to see how the chatbot would fare. The results showed that Le Chat’s responses were adequate but lacked a lot of specifics while ChatGPT went into more detail. In conclusion, the reviewer noted that Le Chat did surprise him with how fast and efficient it was but that it was still a little “brusque and somewhat broad in its answers.” – which he assures is not a bad thing if you want generalized answers and advice in a hurry.

Carl Franzen from Venture Beat also took to pitting the French chatbot against the biggest AI platforms available now. In terms of pricing, Le Chat seems to have the most affordable plan when compared to the $20 per month for ChatGPT Plus and Claude’s varied pricing.

Franzen then compared the prompt output of Le Chat and ChatGPT – noting that the French newcomer was noticeably faster in its outputs than ChatGPT. However, its Black Forest Labs Ultra model image generation capabilities were surprisingly not as adherent to prompts as ChatGPT’s built-in connection to OpenAI’s DALL-E 3 image model.

Sourced from Venture Beast

Franzen concluded that with DeepSeek “Mistral AI’s European positioning, fast performance, and competitive pricing could make it an increasingly attractive choice for businesses looking to integrate AI assistants into their workflows.”

Conclusion

It is important to note that while these comparisons might inform your choice of AI platform, these are still developing technologies and there may be newer and more efficient ways to use AI in the future for each of them – or for a new platform to shake the field again. The AI revolution is an ever-evolving petri dish that will hold innovative discoveries at every turn – it is only our responsibility to use them wisely.