[aborsy]

It’s interesting that a French company can compete at international level to some extent, given the regulations, labor laws and generally the business unfriendly environment. I suspect they capitalize on the preference of European governments to use EU products, but might be wrong.

[maelito]

This comment is ridiculous. France's economy is bigger than 90 % of "unregulated" countries.

European regulations help protect from USA's tech monopolies. French labor laws and social security and state-funded scientific schools helped build one of the most competent international AI scientist generation.

All of europe got crushed by the US on the domain of internet. "Regulated" or not.

[linkregister]

Indeed, French labor laws and their downstream effects have pushed the most talented French researchers to US-based frontier labs, thus building one of the most competent cohorts of international AI scientists.

[kergonath]

This has more to do with the humongous amounts of money sloshing around in VC funds and the disproportionate importance of the US in the global financial markets. They just followed the money. Those who are successful in securing funding then tend to come back eventually.

[rvnx]

Curious to see, it sounds like a rather pretty irrational decision. I don’t see many YC companies suddenly running toward France after securing funding.

[pembrook]

Again, the amount of money “sloshing around” in US based VC funds is again due to policy decisions made by the US.

By having a diverse set of private pension funds and endowments as LPs this is what funds the VC ecosystem.

France vacuums up its private capital into government pension schemes and dumps it into low yielding government bonds.

[olivermuty]

Do you really believe this? Lol

Could you please elaborate what labour law drives the labour out of france?

[linkregister]

Haha yeah. I'm being a bit silly but I do.

The impacts of French labor law have been studied. The European Union is a natural laboratory for the impacts of labor policy. There is a strong correlation between looser requirements for terminating employees and startup formation and risk-taking in business. The Nordics and the Baltics have produced more successful technology firms than countries where dismissing employees is onerous.

The impact of labor laws in France is profound. To avoid hiring employees, many firms bring people on short-term contracts. This disproportionately impacts young people. A tradeoff of the risk of being unable to discharge employees is reduced salaries for the gainfully employed. I have met several French people in tech who left because their post-tax compensation was so low relative to employment in the United States.

This information is unsourced and parroted from various articles in The Economist, Money & Macro podcast, and accounts of European citizens I've known.

[Oreb]

I don’t know much about the Baltics, but in the Nordic countries, dismissing employees is no easier than in France.

[retinaros]

Taxation, admin hell, government involvement led by highly uncompetent unelected people that got to make decision on the sovereignty and future of Companies. The only chance for mistral is to escape the grasp of france and its low iq visionless political “elites” or else theyll endup like dailymotion.

Building a company in france and europe is hell even mistral ceo said this a few days ago in front of french officials

[vrganj]

As somebody who's built a company in Europe, I don't know what you're talking about. I suspect you don't, either.

[rvnx]

What was the jurisdiction ? France is among the most difficult countries for entrepreneurs in the EU (maybe the Germany too, with their written paperwork and rigidity).

In top of high taxes, there is a very adversarial administration and a philosophy of “I’ve told you, you should never have started this project”.

In the baltics it is easy for example, but your experience can vary a lot depending on the country as the EU business environment is not uniform.

[retinaros]

https://youtu.be/I20fcnkzj5A?is=uZAXyTjTioNdUhNV

[menaerus]

Everything that the parent comment said I tend to agree, and I lived in Europe for a long time. One thing he left out, and which is also very important, is a high level of corruption. Your success is defined by a function who you know and not what you can actually do - EU funds being a prime example but even without them every day work is the same.

[holoduke]

You would be surprised that many regulations are lobbied by American companies to secure their dominance. From gambling to advertising. European regulations are not to help citizens. But to help big institutions.

[guerby]

That's exactly what the CEO of Mistral Arthur Mensch says in this audition before french legislators:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I20fcnkzj5A

[retinaros]

Its not ridiculous but accurate. You right the scientist generation is huge from europe but many leave europe… Brain drain in france is huge nowadays because of what op states.

And if you look at mistral biggest customers it would be lying not to say they are done through political ties. No shame in saying that. US gov and agencies created FAANG through those same mecanism

[pezgrande]

I have yet to see someone recommending Mistral for anything tbh.

[phillc73]

Their Voxtral[1] speech models are really good.

[1] https://mistral.ai/news/voxtral

[nmfisher]

+1 for this, I've found Voxtral to be the best combination of price/speed/accuracy.

[qrios]

We are using it for "old-fashioned" use cases (sentiment, classification) for some clients here in Europe. Mistral Small 3.2 8bit is good enough for most well-defined cases.

It may just be greenwashing to check “AI sovereignty” off the list.

[keybored]

It’s predictable that a board full of 100K USD+[1] salary programmers and capitalists are negative against labor laws.

[1] Outdated by now (higher)?