[tugdual]

They’re not competing in the same domain - if you look at their business model it actually is much closer to ML consulting for companies (CMA CGM, ASML, Airbus…). The big three are trying to capture B2C mainly while Mistral is full focused B2B

[throwaway260124]

What’s in Europe ( or maybe not to generalize in France/Germany) that creates this bias for consulting?

[ben_w]

I don't know about France, but here in Germany I think there's more room for B2B than B2C because of the desire for stability, itself leading to bureaucracy in everyday life that sets expectations for a much slower everything (like, buying a house took 7 months, many contracts have 3 month notice periods).

But that's just my best guess, and I'm saying this as one who migrated here rather than growing up here. I've also actually noticed the literal anarchists here, whereas the ones in the UK I only knew once they told me, before anyone makes a planet-of-hats kind of mistake on this.

[ElFitz]

Another aspect is that selling to all of Europe as a B2C business is hard. Until recently you ended up having to register for VAT all over the place, god only knows how many different specificities, bureaus, and rules, with most payment solutions not helping you in any way, and most accountants (in my experience) being at best unable to help you in any significant fashion, at worst being very confident in their ability to help you.

It is done, but by very few. And the EU has made progress on uniformizing and simplifying it, but it seems to have done more progress on the B2B side than on B2C.

While the US is a much bigger consumer market than any single EU country, with significant differences in disposable income and spending power. 18% to 20% of full-time workers in the US make over $100.000. That's nearly half the entire population of France. A third that of Germany.

And even if there are differences and administrative hurdles when selling across US states borders, that road has mostly (or seems to have, from here) been paved.

[snowpid]

It brings more money. Europe in general has much more industry (hence China shock might be bigger) so Industrial AI makes more sense. And also the amount of Consumers needing industrial consulting is not high.

[port11]

An hypothesis from my own consulting: firing an employee can be somewhat difficult, and their salary has quite some taxes on top. At my previous startup we’d rule-of-thumb calculate someone as costing us 140% of their pre-tax salary.

Put these two together and a freelancer becomes an interesting proposition for some tasks. In Germany I could bill roughly 2.5x my after-tax salary. You also incur no other costs such as equipment and illness-as—a-loss. And… you’re really easy to fire when COVID comes around.

[antipaul]

"The big three are trying to capture B2C mainly"

I think it's more complicated. Anthropic has been focused on enterprise for a long time, and OpenAI seems to be doubling down as well.