Mistral

Eyebrows were raised after Paris-based AI startup Mistral raised 105m with no product, a mere four weeks after launching. While some welcomed the raise as a milestone for European tech, others saw it as sign of AI hype reaching a feverish peak.Most surprisingly, Mistral did not even use a pitch deck in the style of Rippling and Airbase, the company raised millions with a simple memo written in Google Docs.Their pitch memo focuses on two main selling points 1 that Europe has yet to see the appearance of a serious contender in building foundational models, and that Mistral will play a big role in this major geopolitical issue, and 2 embracing an open-source approach unlike OpenAIs black box system will make it easier for companies to build better, faster products. The company raised from notable investors including Lightspeed Ventures, French billionaire Xavier Niel and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt.