Mistral releases Voxtral, its first open source AI audio model
On Tuesday, Mistral announced the release of Voxtral, its first family of audio models aimed at businesses.
The company is pitching Voxtral as the first open model that's capable of deploying 'truly usable speech intelligence in production.'
In other words, no longer will developers have to choose between a cheap, open system that fumbles transcriptions and doesn't really understand what's being said, and one that functions well, but is closed, leaving developers with a higher bill and less control over deployment.
For businesses, that means Voxtral offers an affordable alternative that the company claims is 'less than half the price' of comparable solutions.
Mistral says Voxtral can transcribe up to 30 minutes of audio. Due to its LLM backbone, Mistral Small 3.1, it can understand up to 40 minutes, allowing users to ask questions about the audio content, generate summaries, or turn voice commands into real-time actions like calling APIs or running functions. Voxtral is also multilingual, with the ability to transcribe and understand languages including English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Hindi, German, Dutch, and Italian.
The company is offering up two variants of its 'speech understanding models'. The first, Voxtral Small, has 24B parameters for production-scale deployments, and is competitive with ElevenLabs Scribe, GPT-4o-mini, and Gemini 2.5 Flash.
The second, Voxtral Mini, has 3 billion parameters for local and edge deployments. There's also an ultra-cheap, stripped-down, fast API version of the 3B model called Voxtral Mini Transcribe that is optimized for transcription-only use cases and promises to outperform OpenAI Whisper for less than half the price.
Users can try Voxtral for free by downloading the API on Hugging Face or testing the models in Mistral's chatbot Le Chat. Integrating the API into applications starts at $0.001 per minute, according to the company.
The launch comes a month after Mistral announced Magistral, its first family of reasoning models that work through problems step-by-step for improved reliability.
Mistral, one of the top AI firms in Europe, is well-known for its advocacy pushing open source AI models. Earlier this month, TechCrunch reported that the company is in talks to raise up to $1 billion in equity from investors like Abu Dhabi's MGX fund.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New York Post
24 minutes ago
- New York Post
Shuttered Albany restaurant popular with NY elite, politicians to reopen as members-only social club
An Albany restaurant that used to feature a clientele list teeming with some of the most powerful politicians in New York is set to reopen as a private members' dining club in late 2025. The La Serre restaurant closed in 2020 after it was unable to bounce back from the COVID-19 lockdown, with much of its business at the time relying on large gatherings like banquets and receptions, founder Anne Trimble told the Times Union. The French-based restaurant originally opened in 1977 and quickly became a favorite among New York's political elite on both sides of the aisle during its run, including former Govs. Hugh Carey, Mario Cuomo, George Pataki and Andrew Cuomo. Advertisement Albany's La Serre restaurant will be taken over by an exclusive politician nightclub. Albany Times Union via Getty Ima Now, Mayor Eric Adams' spokesman Todd Shapiro is looking to revamp the historic mainstay alongside Greg Caggiano and Todd Miller of the law firm Miller & Caggiano. 'This is going to be the most important political and social venue north of Manhattan. We're bringing back the old-school power — but with a modern twist: young, trendsetting, high-end, and unapologetically political,' Shapiro said. Advertisement Their vision centers around elevating the old restaurant's history by making it a hotspot for 'high-level networking, private events, and political strategy' while filling the space of a much-needed 'contemporary social anchor,' according to a press release. They plan to make it highly selective, primarily limiting membership to public leaders, media influencers, creatives and civic entrepreneurs, according to the release. La Serre closed in 2020 after it was unable to recover from the COVID-19 lockdown. Albany Times Union via Getty Ima The restaurant will also include a secluded 'War Room' — which shares its name with another restaurant owned by Shapiro — that will be reserved for politicians' off-the-record meetings. Advertisement The new and improved La Serre will include a rooftop terrace and renovated interior, likely shifting away from the upscale, green leather-laden atmosphere of the old restaurant and gravitating towards something more 'clubby,' per the release. Trimble founded the restaurant alongside her late husband, Geoffrey, who passed away in 2005. She managed the restaurant with her son, John, up through its closure, the Times Union reported.
Business Insider
6 hours ago
- Business Insider
Ghana secures first Paris Club debt deal from France
France has signed a bilateral agreement with Ghana to provide debt relief under the country's ongoing external debt restructuring programme, marking a major milestone in Ghana's efforts to recover from unsustainable debt levels following the COVID-19 pandemic. France signed a debt relief agreement with Ghana as part of an external debt restructuring program. This makes France the first Paris Club member to formally support Ghana's financial recovery. Ghana noted economic progress, including inflation reduction, reflecting positive indicators of recovery. The agreement, signed on Friday, July 25, makes France the first Paris Club member to formally commit to debt relief for Ghana. The development follows Parliament's approval of the indicative terms presented by the Official Creditor Committee (OCC), according to Citi Newsroom. Ghana's Finance Minister, Dr. Cassiel Ato Forson, who signed on behalf of the government, described the agreement as ' the most significant milestone' and urged other Paris Club members to follow France's lead. 'We expect to complete the process as soon as possible so that Ghana can breathe again, ' he said. ' Today is a milestone, a milestone in the sense that it has taken us some time to get here. But it is the most significant one. The most significant one, which will pave the way for others to also emulate the steps taken by France in signing this bilateral agreement,' he added. Officials express optimism over broader support from global creditors The signing ceremony was attended by French Ambassador to Ghana Jules Armand Aniambossou, Paris Club Secretary-General and OCC Co-Chair William Roos, and officials from both governments. Speaking at the event and during his presentation of the 2025 Mid-Year Budget Review in Parliament, Dr. Forson noted that inflation had dropped from 54% to 13.7%, adding, 'We have gone through turbulent signs but we can see that hope is in sight.' He also expressed optimism that Ghana's recent economic progress would be recognized by other members of the Paris Club framework, expediting the country's external debt restructuring process. Ambassador Aniambossou said France's decision reflected the strong ties between the two countries. ' When your friend or family member is facing difficulties, you have to show that you are there for them and take some key actions, ' he said. Paris Club Secretary-General William Roos called for stronger collaboration among creditors. ' We have to progressively build a strong trust between France, China, the G20 and Paris Club members,' he said.
Boston Globe
7 hours ago
- Boston Globe
Trump criticized the idea of presidential vacations. His Scotland trip is built around golf.
The White House isn't calling Trump's five-day, midsummer jaunt a vacation, but rather a working trip where the Republican president might hold a news conference and sit for interviews with U.S. and British media outlets. Trump was also talking trade in separate meetings with European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Trump is staying at his properties near Turnberry and Aberdeen, where his family owns two golf courses and is opening a third on Aug. 13. Trump played golf over the weekend at Turnberry and is helping cut the ribbon on the new course on Tuesday. Advertisement He's not the first president to play in Scotland: Dwight D. Eisenhower played at Turnberry in 1959, more than a half century before Trump bought it, after meeting with French President Charles de Gaulle in Paris. But none of Trump's predecessors has constructed a foreign itinerary around promoting vacation sites his family owns and is actively expanding. Advertisement It lays bare how Trump has leveraged his second term to pad his family's profits in a variety of ways, including overseas development deals and promoting cryptocurrencies, despite growing questions about ethics concerns. 'You have to look at this as yet another attempt by Donald Trump to monetize his presidency,' said Leonard Steinhorn, who teaches political communication and courses on American culture and the modern presidency at American University. 'In this case, using the trip as a PR opportunity to promote his golf courses.' A parade of golf carts and security accompanied President Trump at Turnberry, on the Scottish coast southwest of Glasgow, on Sunday. Christopher Furlong/Getty President Trump on the links. Christopher Furlong/Getty Presidents typically vacation in the US Franklin D. Roosevelt went to the Bahamas, often for the excellent fishing, five times between 1933 and 1940. He visited Canada's Campobello Island in New Brunswick, where he had vacationed as a child, in 1933, 1936 and 1939. Reagan spent Easter 1982 on vacation in Barbados after meeting with Caribbean leaders and warning of a Marxist threat that could spread throughout the region from nearby Grenada. Presidents also never fully go on vacation. They travel with a large entourage of aides, receive intelligence briefings, take calls and otherwise work away from Washington. Kicking back in the United States, though, has long been the norm. Harry S. Truman helped make Key West, Florida, a tourist hot spot with his 'Little White House' cottage there. Several presidents, including James Buchanan and Benjamin Harrison, visited the Victorian architecture in Cape May, New Jersey. More recently, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama boosted tourism on Massachusetts' Martha's Vineyard, while Trump has buoyed Palm Beach, Florida, with frequent trips to his Mar-a-Lago estate. But any tourist lift Trump gets from his Scottish visit is likely to most benefit his family. 'Every president is forced to weigh politics versus fun on vacation,' said Jeffrey Engel, David Gergen Director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, who added that Trump is 'demonstrating his priorities.' Advertisement 'When he thinks about how he wants to spend his free time, A., playing golf, B., visiting places where he has investments and C., enhancing those investments, that was not the priority for previous presidents, but it is his vacation time,' Engel said. It's even a departure from Trump's first term, when he found ways to squeeze in visits to his properties while on trips more focused on work. Trump stopped at his resort in Hawaii to thank staff members after visiting the memorial site at Pearl Harbor and before embarking on an Asia trip in November 2017. He played golf at Turnberry in 2018 before meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Finland. Trump once decried the idea of taking vacations as president. 'Don't take vacations. What's the point? If you're not enjoying your work, you're in the wrong job,' Trump wrote in his 2004 book, 'Think Like a Billionaire.' During his presidential campaign in 2015, he pledged to 'rarely leave the White House.' Even as recently as a speech at a summit on artificial intelligence in Washington on Wednesday, Trump derided his predecessor for flying long distances for golf — something he's now doing. 'They talked about the carbon footprint and then Obama hops onto a 747, Air Force One, and flies to Hawaii to play a round of golf and comes back,' he said. On the green... Christopher Furlong/Getty ... and in the sand. Christopher Furlong/Getty Presidential vacations and any overseas trips were once taboo Trump isn't the first president not wanting to publicize taking time off. George Washington was criticized for embarking on a New England tour to promote the presidency. Some took issue with his successor, John Adams, for leaving the then-capital of Philadelphia in 1797 for a long visit to his family's farm in Quincy, Massachusetts. James Madison left Washington for months after the War of 1812. Advertisement Teddy Roosevelt helped pioneer the modern presidential vacation in 1902 by chartering a special train and directing key staffers to rent houses near Sagamore Hill, his home in Oyster Bay, New York, according to the White House Historical Association. Four years later, Roosevelt upended tradition again, this time by becoming the first president to leave the country while in office. The New York Times noted that Roosevelt's 30-day trip by yacht and battleship to tour construction of the Panama Canal 'will violate the traditions of the United States for 117 years by taking its President outside the jurisdiction of the Government at Washington.' In the decades since, where presidents opted to vacation, even outside the U.S., has become part of their political personas. In addition to New Jersey, Grant relaxed on Martha's Vineyard. Calvin Coolidge spent the 1928 Christmas holidays at Sapelo Island, Georgia. Lyndon B. Johnson had his 'Texas White House,' a Hill Country ranch. Eisenhower vacationed in Newport, Rhode Island. John F. Kennedy went to Palm Springs, California, and his family's compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, among other places. Richard Nixon had the 'Southern White House' on Key Biscayne, Florida, while Joe Biden traveled frequently to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, while also visiting Nantucket, Massachusetts, and St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands. George H.W. Bush was a frequent visitor to his family's property in Kennebunkport, Maine, and didn't let the start of the Gulf War in 1991 detour him from a monthlong vacation there. His son, George W. Bush, opted for his ranch in Crawford, Texas, rather than a more posh destination. Advertisement Presidential visits help tourism in some places more than others, but Engel said that for some Americans, 'if the president of the Untied States goes some place, you want to go to the same place.' He noted that visitors emulating presidential vacations are out 'to show that you're either as cool as he or she, that you understand the same values as he or she or, heck, maybe you'll bump into he or she.'
