“We are disappointed with Mistral”: the Ecosia search engine abandons French AI for Chinese models

Last May, Ecosia, the German search engine that funds reforestation projects, replaced the American company OpenAI with the French company Mistral as its AI provider. Today, Ecosia announces that it is dropping Mistral in favor of open… Chinese models.To justify this decision, the head of Ecosia cites performance issues, the use of nuclear energy and questions of European sovereignty.

Ecosia abandons Mistral for Chinese open-source AI models

In an interview with Politico, Christian Kroll, CEO of Ecosia, bluntly justifies this decision: “We are disappointed by the quality of Mistral.” According to him, Mistral’s models are now “a year behind” the competition. Ecosia would thus have encountered recurring technical problems, including overloaded servers. Christian Kroll would then have reached a conclusion: “We were simply too important a client for Mistral.”

Besides the issue of performance, Ecosia’s CEO points out that Mistral’s servers are powered by French nuclear energy. For context, Germany has historically taken an anti-nuclear stance, with the country preferring to rely notably on renewable energy and… coal. Finally, Christian Kroll criticizes Mistral’s partnerships with non-European actors: “The fact that Mistral depends on international investment does not, in our view, constitute a guarantee of sovereignty.”

Performance issues, servers powered by nuclear energy, and collaborations between Mistral and non-European actors would thus have prompted Ecosia to end its partnership with the French company.

Ecosia has now entered into a new partnership with the German platform Melious, which hosts around sixty open AI models in Europe, including Qwen (Alibaba), GLM (Z.ai), and Kimi (Moonshot AI). In other words, the eco-friendly search engine is now relying on Chinese open-source AI models. Christian Kroll also explained that he has cut his costs in half by switching to Melious. It is also worth noting that Ecosia is used by a number of European institutions, such as the German Federal Ministry for the Environment and the UK National Health Service, according to Politico.

Mistral responds

Guillaume Lample, Mistral’s chief science officer and co-founder, told Politico: “I encourage them to test our new model as soon as possible. We can even give them early access today if they wish.” It should be noted that Ecosia announced it was dropping Mistral on the very day the French company launched its new Large 4 model, nicknamed the Chonk. On X, Mistral executive Arthur Mensch said: “Sorry if nuclear power is a real sticking point.”

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Source: Politico