Latest news with #MGX
Daily Tribune
4 days ago
- Business
- Daily Tribune
UAE overtakes UK in global fintech investment rankings
The United Arab Emirates has surged into second place globally for fintech investment, displacing the United Kingdom for the first time on record. This sharp jump follows a $2 billion investment by MGX into the cryptocurrency exchange Binance, propelling the UAE ahead of its traditional Western rival. The United States retained its top spot with $11 billion raised through over 100 deals in the first half of 2025. The UAE secured $2.2 billion, while the UK lagged slightly behind at $1.5 billion. Power shift The rankings, released based on the latest global fintech market data, reflect a significant shift in global capital flows. The UAE's rise was driven by a single but substantial deal, signalling how strategic investments can rapidly transform national standings in high-growth sectors. India came close to overtaking the UK as well, collecting $1.4 billion and highlighting a narrowing gap in the global fintech hierarchy. Singapore followed with $798 million, while France and Germany raised $693 million and $668 million respectively. Fintech gains pace Despite uneven investment figures, the fintech sector as a whole is showing signs of maturity. Global fintech revenues grew by 21 percent last year, significantly higher than the 13 percent rise seen in 2023. A study by Boston Consulting Group notes that the sector has entered a new phase, with fintech revenues expected to triple those of traditional finance institutions by 2024. The UAE's new position in the rankings underscores a growing trend of non-Western economies gaining ground in the financial technology space. As funding patterns shift and the sector matures, global leadership in fintech is no longer confined to legacy power centers.
Yahoo
15-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Mistral releases Voxtral, its first open source AI audio model
As AI systems become more capable, speech is fast becoming the default way we communicate with machines. French AI startup Mistral has jumped into the audio race with its first open model, aiming to challenge the dominance of walled-off corporate systems with open-weight alternatives. 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.
Yahoo
09-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Mistral AI seeks $1bn equity funding with potential MGX backing
Mistral AI, one of the major players in the European AI sector, is reportedly engaged in negotiations to raise up to $1bn in equity funding. Potential investors include Abu Dhabi's sovereign technology investor, MGX. According to a report by Bloomberg, these discussions are in preliminary stages and have not yet defined a valuation for Mistral should the financing materialise. The Paris-based AI startup is also seeking substantial debt financing from French banks, including Bpifrance, which is an existing stakeholder. Founded in France in 2023, Mistral focuses on developing open-source large language models (LLMs) and is currently claimed to be Europe's largest AI startup. It has amassed over €1bn ($1.17bn) in investment to date, achieving a €5.8bn ($6.79bn) valuation after last year's fundraising round. In its latest Series B round concluded in June 2024, Mistral raked in €600m ($643m) in funding. Mistral was co-founded by Arthur Mensch, Guillaume Lample, and Timothée Lacroix. The company categorises its LLMs into general purpose, specialist, and research models. These models often use an open-weight structure under an Apache 2.0 license and are accessible across common machine learning platforms, though top-tier models sometimes carry commercial restrictions. Mistral adopts distinct naming conventions for its models, such as 'Mistral 7B' which highlight parameter counts or terms like 'Mistral Large.' Some updates lead to changes in model names, as demonstrated when 'Mistral Large' transitioned to 'Mistral Large 2'. The company's Le Chat platform functions as a beta version chatbot, which was released in February. Le Chat competes with OpenAI's ChatGPT and other generative AI platforms by leveraging intelligent conversation interfaces. It incorporates various models including the advanced multimodal Pixtral 12B. In May 2025, Mistral formed a joint venture with MGX and Nvidia with an aim to create what is projected to be Europe's most extensive AI data centre near Paris. In June 2025, Mistral and oil and gas major TotalEnergies formed a partnership to establish an innovation lab designed to explore digital energy production solutions that transition towards low-carbon technologies. "Mistral AI seeks $1bn equity funding with potential MGX backing" was originally created and published by Verdict, a GlobalData owned brand. The information on this site has been included in good faith for general informational purposes only. It is not intended to amount to advice on which you should rely, and we give no representation, warranty or guarantee, whether express or implied as to its accuracy or completeness. You must obtain professional or specialist advice before taking, or refraining from, any action on the basis of the content on our site. Error while retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data
Yahoo
09-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Mistral AI seeks $1bn equity funding with potential MGX backing
Mistral AI, one of the major players in the European AI sector, is reportedly engaged in negotiations to raise up to $1bn in equity funding. Potential investors include Abu Dhabi's sovereign technology investor, MGX. According to a report by Bloomberg, these discussions are in preliminary stages and have not yet defined a valuation for Mistral should the financing materialise. The Paris-based AI startup is also seeking substantial debt financing from French banks, including Bpifrance, which is an existing stakeholder. Founded in France in 2023, Mistral focuses on developing open-source large language models (LLMs) and is currently claimed to be Europe's largest AI startup. It has amassed over €1bn ($1.17bn) in investment to date, achieving a €5.8bn ($6.79bn) valuation after last year's fundraising round. In its latest Series B round concluded in June 2024, Mistral raked in €600m ($643m) in funding. Mistral was co-founded by Arthur Mensch, Guillaume Lample, and Timothée Lacroix. The company categorises its LLMs into general purpose, specialist, and research models. These models often use an open-weight structure under an Apache 2.0 license and are accessible across common machine learning platforms, though top-tier models sometimes carry commercial restrictions. Mistral adopts distinct naming conventions for its models, such as 'Mistral 7B' which highlight parameter counts or terms like 'Mistral Large.' Some updates lead to changes in model names, as demonstrated when 'Mistral Large' transitioned to 'Mistral Large 2'. The company's Le Chat platform functions as a beta version chatbot, which was released in February. Le Chat competes with OpenAI's ChatGPT and other generative AI platforms by leveraging intelligent conversation interfaces. It incorporates various models including the advanced multimodal Pixtral 12B. In May 2025, Mistral formed a joint venture with MGX and Nvidia with an aim to create what is projected to be Europe's most extensive AI data centre near Paris. In June 2025, Mistral and oil and gas major TotalEnergies formed a partnership to establish an innovation lab designed to explore digital energy production solutions that transition towards low-carbon technologies. "Mistral AI seeks $1bn equity funding with potential MGX backing" was originally created and published by Verdict, a GlobalData owned brand. The information on this site has been included in good faith for general informational purposes only. It is not intended to amount to advice on which you should rely, and we give no representation, warranty or guarantee, whether express or implied as to its accuracy or completeness. You must obtain professional or specialist advice before taking, or refraining from, any action on the basis of the content on our site.
Yahoo
08-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Mistral AI reportedly in talks for $1 billion funding from MGX, others
-- French artificial intelligence startup Mistral AI is reportedly in discussions to secure up to $1 billion in equity funding from multiple investors, including Abu Dhabi fund MGX. According to a Bloomberg report on Tuesday, the company is also negotiating hundreds of millions of euros in debt financing from French lenders, including existing investor Bpifrance SACA. The discussions remain preliminary and could change, with no clear indication yet of what Mistral's valuation would be following such an investment. If completed, this deal would strengthen connections between France and the United Arab Emirates in the artificial intelligence sector, an industry currently dominated by American and Chinese companies. Mistral AI, founded in 2023, stands as Europe's largest AI startup. The company has already raised more than €1 billion ($1.17 billion) since its inception, reaching a valuation of €5.8 billion after a funding round last year. Related articles Mistral AI reportedly in talks for $1 billion funding from MGX, others Bernstein starts bullish on Kuaishou, Bilibili on rising video ad tide Meta invests $3.5 billion in AI glasses partner EssilorLuxottica - Bloomberg Sign in to access your portfolio
