Mistral AI’s CEO Arthur Mensch said that China is not behind the West in AI technology, Bloomberg News reported.
“China is not behind the West. I think this is a fairy tale,” said Mensch in an interview on Bloomberg Television at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday. The capabilities of China’s open-source technology are “probably stressing the CEOs in the US.”
The views from the head of one of Europe’s top AI companies differ from other tech leaders at Davos, who reassured lawmakers and business chiefs that China is behind the U.S. in AI by months or years.
Alphabet’s (GOOG) (GOOGL) unit, Google’s DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis said China is about six months behind the West in frontier model development and has not shown it can break new ground. Meanwhile, Anthropic (ANTHRO) CEO Dario Amodei said that the U.S. policy of restricting cutting-edge tech sales to China was slowing progress there and that selling high-end AI chips to the Asian nation would be like “selling nuclear weapons to North Korea,” the report added.
Last year, Chinese AI startup stunned U.S. tech giants following the release of its AI open-source model R1.
AI is emerging as a powerful force with the potential to reshape economies and the workforce. On Thursday, Nvidia (NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang said at Davos that AI has started the largest infrastructure buildout in human history, and more energy, land, and skilled workers are needed.
In September 2025, ASML (ASML) agreed to invest €1.3B in Mistral AI, giving the chip equipment maker an 11% stake in the French startup. This also marked one of Europe’s largest AI deals.
Mistral is targeting enterprise clients for growth, and Mensch said that financial companies such as HSBC Holdings and BNP Paribas were driving growth. Mistral intends to exceed $1B in revenue and will invest $1B in capital spending this year, said Mensch, the report added.
The French company, which is also backed by Microsoft (MSFT), is also eyeing acquisition targets.
Mistral did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Seeking Alpha.
Last month, Mistral unveiled its next generation of AI models called Mistral 3.
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