Mistral, a Paris-based AI startup led by 31-year-old CEO Arthur Mensch, has launched a new AI model named Mistral Large, aiming to challenge industry giants such as OpenAI. The 9-month-old company, with its motto 'Viva, La France,' aims to build AI systems more efficiently and affordably. Mistral Large, described as being between GPT-4 and Claude 2 in capability and occasionally better in logic compared to Mistral Medium, has been praised for its performance. The startup also introduced an open-source ChatGPT competitor, 'Le Chat,' with a notable cutoff date in 2021. Its models are now available on OpenRouter and to all Perplexity Pro users. Despite concerns that Mistral Large may not surpass GPT-4, its performance and pricing strategy, being 1.25 times cheaper than GPT-4 and claimed to be almost as good, have sparked significant interest. This development marks a significant milestone for the French AI sector, with Paris emerging as a major AI tech hub.