French AI startup Mistral on Thursday hailed Chinese competitor DeepSeek’s R1 model as “great” for the fast-developing sector, while announcing another new release of its own.
Mistral has in the past been hailed for offering models — the engines that power generative AIs — comparable with American giants at a fraction of the cost in energy and cash.
DeepSeek claimed that its R1 release pulled off a similar feat, causing near panic in the US this week and battering tech stocks.
R1 is “a great and complementary piece of open-source technology,” Mistral…