Mistral offers free testing of its AI models
Mistral announced in a blog post the launch of a new free tier to allow developers to build test apps using its AI models.
The startup also lowered the price of developer access to its AI models through an API, and added image processing to its free consumer chatbot, le Chat.
The Paris-based startup, which was previously valued at around $6 billion, has announced several updates to attract developers.
Advanced large language models have become a commodity in the developer world, and Mistral is trying to compete with OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic, which are lowering prices for developers. OpenAI and Google offer free tiers for developers to test their AI models.
The new Mistral layer is available through the la Plateforme API platform, and the startup says it allows developers to experiment, evaluate, and prototype using its AI models at no cost.
Developers need to upgrade to the paid commercial tier of Mistral, with high price limits, in order to use Mistral models in production.
Users can download and use Mistral AI models under the Apache 2.0 license, although setting up the infrastructure to host these AI models is complex.
Le Plateforme offers an easy experience for developers and encourages people to build on the Mistral platform.
The company also reduced the prices for accessing Mistral NeMo, Mistral Small, and Codestral through the API by more than 50 percent, and reduced the price of Mistral Large by 33 percent.
Mistral's first multimedia model, the Pixtral 12B, which can process images and texts, is now available via le Chat.
The startup announced its new AI model last week, which is supposed to allow users to scan, analyze and search through image files.