French AI startup Mistral, valued at roughly 21 billion euros, and a coalition of European AI companies are accusing US firms, particularly Anthropic, of using safety concerns as a competitive strategy to protect market dominance. Anthropic published an essay on September 12 advocating for voluntary coordination among AI labs on safety, a proposal that Europeans view as regulatory capture. European companies also rejected Anthropic’s request for an antitrust waiver allowing collaboration on safety measures, seeing it as creating a closed club that favors established players. Founded in 2023, Mistral raised 3 billion euros in a Series D funding round that pushed its valuation to approximately 21 billion euros, positioning the company as a sovereign alternative to US giants for French government contracts.
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