Fostering innovation through open source in generative AI development, Databricks has announced its collaboration with Mistral AI by announcing a strategic partnership and participation in Mistral AI’s Series A funding round. 

This partnership signifies a significant step towards democratising AI, as Mistral AI’s open models are now seamlessly integrated within the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform, which includes the integration of Mistral AI’s models, including Mistral 7B and Mixtral 8×7 providing customers with enhanced capabilities for generative AI applications.

Arthur Mensch, Founder and CEO of Mistral AI, expressed his enthusiasm for the alliance, stating, “We are delighted to forge this strategic alliance with Databricks, reaffirming our shared commitment to the portability, openness, and accessibility of generative artificial intelligence for all.”

“Since the start of this year, we have already seen close to 1000 enterprises leverage Mistral models on the Databricks platform, making millions of model inferences,” reads the blog.

Already, numerous enterprises have reported tangible benefits from utilising Mistral AI’s models on the Databricks platform. James Lin, Head of AI/ML Innovation at Experian, noted the superior performance and rapid prototyping facilitated by Mixtral 8x7B, while Luv Luhadia from Celebal Technologies highlighted the enhanced accuracy achieved in their consumer chatbot application.

With Mistral AI’s models now accessible through the Databricks Marketplace, customers can easily discover, deploy, and customise these models to suit their specific needs. The integration also extends to Mosaic AI Model Serving, enabling efficient and secure model deployment and inference across clouds and providers.

Furthermore, customers can leverage the Mosaic AI Playground within the Databricks console for interactive experimentation with Mistral models, enhancing their understanding of model behaviour and performance characteristics.

In other news, a recent report unveiled that SoftBank ventures is also planning to invest in Mistral AI.