Comment by kioleanu
14 hours ago
I like Mistral, it hits the exact sweet spot between cost and my data staying in the EU, withouth a significant drop in quality, but man are their model naming conventions confusing af. They mention they have a model called Devstral 2, which is neither Codestral nor Devestral. I want to use it, but the api only lists devstral-2512, devstral-latest, devstral-medium-latest, devstral-medium-2507, devstral-small, devstral-small-2507.
I think, devstral-latest should be it, no? So I write to support and get an answer 12 hours later that says oh, no, devstral 2 is definetely called devstral 2 and then a page of instructions on how to set it up in Intellij... generated with AI. The screens it is refering to don't exist and never did.
I got really lost on their site, but to help a bit according to their model page
devstral-2512 devstral-latest and devstral-medium-latest are all devstral 2 https://docs.mistral.ai/models/devstral-2-25-12
labs-devstral-small-2512 and devstral-small-latest are devstral small 2
devstral-medium-2507 is devstral 1.0
and devstral-small-2507 is devstral small 1.1
wow, thank you, this is great. I was thinking they should have a page like this, but I couldn't find myself.
I had the same experience. It's even more confusing when you want to create an API key because they are separated by product, maybe?
no, the key is actually universal, you can't choose a specific product
It depends. The key for their vibe-cli is actually different. You need to get a separate key if you have a subscription and don't want to pay API usage prices.
1 reply →
I have a general impression they are not interested too much in individual devs and making it suite their workflow. They want to be a B2B company and deliver a custom workflow per company.
Or it can just be a Google like problem where a big company one part doesn't talk to the other.
But wouldn't winning devs be a neat helping point in winning b2b contacts? Or they think golf courts are enough for success? Okay they might be right here, but still they make it so confusing for no obvious reason.
In my experience devs rarely have anything to say in B2B contracts. At best they can recommend a solution to the decision maker, but in almost all deals i was a part of they didn’t have any influence on the final decision. I wish it were otherwise but alas
> But wouldn't winning devs be a neat helping point in winning b2b contacts?
How? The largest providers that are trying to win devs are locked in a competition to get the devs to continue using the models for free!
The best way to win B2B contracts is to solve the problems that plague business, not those that plague devs. The devs are fickle, have no stickiness and will jump providers to the next free provider, to self-hosted, etc.
Selling to business using Mistral's approach is, I feel, just a good business plan.
"Giving away some credits for free, then making a loss on subscribers" is an absolutely terrible business plan.
As far as I understood the French president is pushing French most valuated companies to use Mistral. There can't be a more to down strategy :)
Also EU protectionism itself might be enough.
12 replies →
To me it's obvious because the size of companies they are targeting (ASML being an obvious one). I think golf course marketing works well in the EU context when decisions are being made not purely on tech reasons.
2 replies →
you might be correct. for example, they have an intellij plugin that allows integration without the AI Assistant, but it is only available for Enterprise customers
>data staying in the EU
This is really why Mistral has any support.
The models are bottom barrel, but its the best Europe has...
Although you could use Chinese models on European servers.