Berlin-based search engine Ecosia is dropping French AI lab Mistral in favor of open-source models, including Chinese ones, its founder and CEO Christian Kroll told POLITICO. "We are disappointed with the quality of Mistral," Kroll said, adding that the company's models are now "a year behind" the competition.
Ecosia built its brand on climate action and independence from non-European tech, and its services are used by institutions from Germany's federal environment ministry to the UK's National Health Service. In May, it had replaced OpenAI with Mistral as its AI provider — a switch that now looks reversed. The move raises fresh questions about whether Europe can build a competitive, sovereign AI champion on its own soil.
Why Ecosia left Mistral
Kroll said Ecosia ran into recurring technical problems with Mistral, including overloaded servers. "We were simply too large a customer for Mistral," he said. The company also questioned whether Mistral fits its environmental goals, pointing to the large share of nuclear power in France's energy mix, and whether the lab truly guarantees European independence.
"The fact that Mistral relies on investment from international investors is, in our view, not truly sovereign," Kroll said. Mistral has raised billions of euros from backers abroad, including South Korea's Samsung Electronics and US chip giant Nvidia. Mistral did not respond to a request for comment, according to POLITICO.
Mistral's response and Large 4
Mistral co-founder and chief scientist Guillaume Lample pushed back, saying at a press conference that he would encourage Ecosia to test the company's new model as soon as possible, and offered early access. "It takes time to build great models. It takes computing power, it takes science, and we truly believe we're growing exponentially," Lample said, adding that Mistral can also provide model weights and customise them with customers.
