Mistral AI Wants to Help India Build Sovereign AI, Says CEO After Meeting PM Modi

During his visit to France following the G7 Summit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Mistral AI CEO Arthur Mensch to discuss sovereign AI and full-stack AI infrastructure.

“Exchanged views on trusted AI, innovation and the need to ensure that AI remains human-centric and inclusive,” PM Modi wrote in a post on X.

“Talked about prospects for partnerships in India in diverse aspects relating to AI,” he added. 

Mensch said Mistral AI is working to develop sovereign AI capabilities across different regions and sees an opportunity to support India's ambitions in the space.

“We’re a company building sovereign AI capabilities across the world, and the discussion revolved around how to build a full-stack solution that is resilient and that is escaping foreign control,” Mensch said.

He added that the conversation also covered making AI accessible to citizens and government employees while ensuring that India develops the skills needed to build and deploy the technology.

“It also revolved a lot around how to make AI available to everyone, both to the citizens, to the civil servants,” he said. “We want to make sure that the people of India are trained on that technology, become better at building it through startups, for instance, that we would love to be partnering with.”

The comments come as India seeks to strengthen its AI ecosystem through investments in compute infrastructure, foundation models, and talent development under the IndiaAI Mission.

Mensch’s remarks also align with Mistral’s broader positioning around AI sovereignty. Earlier this week, he announced that the company would launch a new family of AI models this summer and open an early-access programme in July for selected partners across research, government, and industry.

“This model and upcoming ones will be open-weight,” Mensch wrote on X. “We believe this is critical for our customer confidence and for the research and developer communities.”

He argued that organisations should be able to inspect, audit, and improve AI systems rather than relying solely on models accessed through third-party interfaces.

Mistral is also expanding its infrastructure offerings through Studio, its deployment platform, and its training platform Forge. According to Mensch, the company can run AI systems in a customer’s virtual private cloud, data centre, or on infrastructure operated independently of US service providers.

“We’re working with companies and governments around the world to make sure their AI systems are up and running outside of external control,” he wrote.

The Paris-based startup has increasingly positioned itself as an alternative to US AI providers, focusing on open-weight models and sovereign AI deployments for governments and enterprises. The company was co-founded in 2023 by Mensch, Chief Science Officer Guillaume Lample, and Chief Technology Officer Timothée Lacroix. 

During his stay in Paris, PM Modi is expected to hold a series of bilateral meetings and participate in the VivaTech Summit 2026, Europe’s largest technology and startup event.