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Comment by moecables

4 hours ago

compared to Deepseek 1017, I'm not sure why I'd use this?

https://openrouter.ai/compare/mistralai/mistral-large-4-0/de...

30 comments

moecables

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Systemerror7A69  4 hours ago

Well, Models are hard to just distill down to a single benchmark number, or even a few across multiple different benchmark - they all behave and work slightly differently and you can find some who work or feel better for you and your use-case specifically.

But you're right, Mistral Large 4 seems a much more expensive but overall weaker model across the board.

The reason to use them would be, well, because they're...Mistral. They're in EU, france is large in nuclear energy so the energy cost of training has much less of an environmental impact, the data protection laws are very good in EU. This can really be a deciding factor for many EU companies, and I think it's good that they now have something which is at least semi-usable. (apparently)

It's also good that other options exist, even if they are worse. Deepseek is kind of like a large specter looming over every model release, because it's just SO cheap and good. That doesn't mean we should abandon every other model.

Still, the model is not really competitive on price and abilities alone. I'm mostly happy to see Mistral still in the fight.

  • petercooper  4 hours ago

    I say this with a slight tongue in cheek, but Mistral does have a better option: they recently added GLM 5.3 to their platform (and it works rather well). Not trained in the EU, though, of course ;-)

    • Systemerror7A69  3 hours ago

      Yeah, absolutely true. And I am guilty of simply using Mistral as a GLM subscription myself. I just really like the GLM 5.3 model.

      I will see where Chonk is better though, since you have both options in one subscription.

  • openclawuser  2 hours ago

    Everything feels very European.

    Unproductive company that is 3rd place (assuming we are lumping 4 better US models and 3 Chinese models).

    The only thing that gives it value is that it's generated in some region in Europe, like random cheese or wine.

    But I still can't imagine a usecase outside patriotism.

    Privacy can be solved by self hosting a US or Chinese model.

    Seems performative.

    • prmoustache  2 hours ago

      You are delusional if you think people like a french, italian or swiss cheese just because it was made in said parts of europe.

      Or you have no taste.

serioussecurity  4 hours ago

If you're required to use a European model

  • szatkus  2 hours ago

    The organization I work for uses GPT and Claude models hosted in EU. I don't see any practical reason to use models made in Europe. Even if you don't want to work with American big tech there are plenty of companies in the EU serving Chinese open-weight models.

  • walrus01  4 hours ago

    Interestingly Mistral has been selling GLM5.3 inference hosted in Europe on their own hardware, for those who are OK using a "not developed in Europe" model but run on hardware located in and controlled by a European corporation.

    https://docs.mistral.ai/models/zai-glm-5-3

    • traceroute66  3 hours ago

      > for those who are OK using a "not developed in Europe" model but run on hardware located in and controlled by a European corporation.

      For the record this is also possible in Europe on Privatemode[1] which also gives you enclave-based processing. And access to GLM-5.3 Flash as well as GLM-5.3

      [1]https://www.privatemode.ai/

    • frotaur  4 hours ago

      Indeed, I see no difference between a chinese model hosted in Europe vs a Europe-grown model.

      You could argue that potentially you can train a backdoor into a foreign-grown model (that has been demonstrated to be possible in toy examples), but I would highly doubt that this would be the case today, given the potential reputational damage if discovered.

      15 replies →

maxloh  3 hours ago

Maybe not now, but in a few years, we might not need frontier models anymore. Open-weight models are only half a year behind the frontier, and both categories are advancing really fast.

Gemini 2.0 Flash, released just 1.5 years ago, could not even repeat a few paragraphs unchanged. Now, we have Mistral, DeepSeek, and MiMo.

  • cyanydeez  3 hours ago

    The TAM is already covered by local models. 10% of a health society could use better models.

    We are in the 70s era of gas guzzling before the gas embargo and cheap foreign imports and economy cars reign.