Latest news with #Mistral
Globe and Mail
a day ago
- Business
- Globe and Mail
Can CoreWeave Turn Weights & Biases Into a Competitive Advantage?
CoreWeave, Inc. CRWV has announced the acquisition of Weights & Biases, a leading AI developer platform, as part of its strategy to strengthen its leadership in high-performance AI cloud infrastructure. First announced in March 2025, the acquisition combines CoreWeave's powerful compute capabilities with Weights & Biases' suite of tools for model training, evaluation and monitoring—creating a unified, end-to-end platform for AI development. This integration is designed to accelerate AI innovation and enhance user productivity, while continuing to support flexible deployment across any infrastructure. The acquisition of Weights & Biases added a customer base of more than 1,400 organizations. Management believes this combination will unlock greater value for the shared customers. At the same time, it continued to raise the bar on performance, becoming the first to deploy GB200 Grace Blackwell systems at scale on an AI cloud platform, powering top AI innovators like Mistral, IBM and Cohere. Earlier this month, CoreWeave and Weights & Biases made their first joint product launch, showcasing the rapid integration and execution. Three major offerings were introduced, which aim to help AI teams develop, deploy and iterate faster by combining CoreWeave's cloud infrastructure with Weights & Biases' developer platform. The launch comprises Mission Control Integration, which helps AI engineers quickly diagnose and resolve training issues by linking infrastructure events to training runs; Weights & Biases Inference, enabling access to top open-source models through a single interface; and Weave Online Evaluations, which monitors production AI agent performance in real-time across any cloud. Together, these products create a seamless platform to accelerate innovation, improve efficiency and empower developers to scale cutting-edge AI solutions with confidence. For 2025, CoreWeave has guided revenues to be in the range of $4.9-$5.1 billion, fueled by surging AI-infrastructure demand. However, the company faces intense competition in the AI cloud space with Nebius Group N.V. NBIS and Microsoft Corporation MSFT. NBIS & MSFT's Recent Acquisitions in the AI Space CoreWeave's closest emerging competitor, Nebius, based in Amsterdam, is focusing on becoming a specialized AI infrastructure company. Unlike CoreWeave, Nebius has not pursued major acquisitions, but it has incubated a range of AI businesses. Its portfolio includes Toloka for data labeling and evaluation, TripleTen for tech education and Avride for autonomous driving technologies. In May 2025, Toloka secured $72 million in strategic funding led by Jeff Bezos's venture fund, underscoring the strength and potential of Nebius' in-house ventures. Nebius is betting on organic growth and vertical integration to build its position in the AI space. Microsoft continues to expand its AI infrastructure through partnerships and investments. In collaboration with the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and TitletownTech, Microsoft launched an AI Co-Innovation Lab on the UWM campus. The company is also integrating cutting-edge open-source models like DeepSeek into Azure and GitHub. With its extended partnership with OpenAI and the growing adoption of Azure OpenAI and Microsoft Copilots across its enterprise suite, Microsoft is positioning Azure AI as the core platform for the AI era. The company has more than 60,000 Azure AI customers, up nearly 60% year over year. CRWV Price Performance and Estimates Internet Software industry 's growth of 6.6%. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for CRWV's earnings for 2025 has been unchanged over the past 30 days. CRWV currently carries a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell). You can see the complete list of today's Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here. Zacks' Research Chief Picks Stock Most Likely to "At Least Double" Our experts have revealed their Top 5 recommendations with money-doubling potential – and Director of Research Sheraz Mian believes one is superior to the others. Of course, all our picks aren't winners but this one could far surpass earlier recommendations like Hims & Hers Health, which shot up +209%. See Our Top Stock to Double (Plus 4 Runners Up) >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Microsoft Corporation (MSFT): Free Stock Analysis Report Nebius Group N.V. (NBIS): Free Stock Analysis Report CoreWeave Inc. (CRWV): Free Stock Analysis Report This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (
Tom's Guide
a day ago
- Tom's Guide
Forget ChatGPT and Gemini — this lesser-known chatbot just ranked No. 1 for privacy
If you use AI every single day, you are likely giving up a lot of personal data, more than you might realize. It has not always been entirely clear which of the AI chatbots are best when it comes to your privacy. While there are some options that have never exactly pretended to be too worried about privacy (looking at you Deepseek), others sit in somewhat murky waters. Well, now we have a better understanding thanks to a new report, which ranks AI and large language models based on their data privacy. This includes 9 of the biggest AI systems, including all of the names you'll know well, and some other lesser-known ones, too. Not only does the report provide a No. 1 option for privacy (a surprising one at that), but it also ranks them based on a number of more specific privacy categories. So which is the best AI chatbot for your privacy? It's Le Chat. Not heard of it? You're not alone. While Mistral has built up a cult following, it hasn't had the same commercial success as the likes of OpenAI or Deepseek. The French AI company was founded in 2023 and has quickly made a mark. It is funded by Microsoft and was founded by three French AI researchers, including a former employee of Google DeepMind. According to the research, Le Chat is limited in its data collections and, unlike most of its competitors, is incredibly limited in who it will share data with. Get instant access to breaking news, the hottest reviews, great deals and helpful tips. While Le Chat doesn't have the same financial backing or amount of testing data as the likes of OpenAI, it is a rapidly growing option. In our testing, we've been especially impressed with its speed of response. It does, however, struggle with more detailed responses. It's good news for the world's most popular chatbot. ChatGPT landed just behind Le Chat in the rankings. While Le Chat can only share user prompts with service providers, OpenAI can also share them with affiliates. OpenAI was, however, the highest rated in terms of transparency on data privacy and scored highly for its low level of data collection. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Meta was the least private AI chatbot in 9th, followed quickly by Gemini at 8th and Copilot just behind it at 7th. Deepseek fell in 6th place, and Claude came 4th. In terms of data collection and sharing, Meta AI was the worst one by quite some way, almost doubling the score of the next worst, Gemini. If privacy is a big concern for you when it comes to AI, the good news is that plenty of great AI chatbots scored well here. Mistral is a great option if you're willing to try something new, but equally, ChatGPT is just behind it across the board. Two of the other biggest competitors came just behind with Grok in 3rd and Anthropic's Claude in 4th. All four of these are not only scoring high on privacy tests but also happen to be some of the best-performing AI chatbots available right now. It is surprising to see such big names like Meta AI, Gemini, and Copilot so far down the list. The report explains that this is mostly down to how much data they share and how unclear their data privacy policies are.
Mint
18-06-2025
- Business
- Mint
Nvidia's ‘Sovereign' AI Could Win a Prize for Irony
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Nvidia Corp. billionaire boss Jensen Huang, clad in his signature leather jacket, has been crisscrossing European capitals and sharing the stage with the likes of Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron as he pitches 'sovereign' artificial intelligence, a vision of new data centers offering essential compute power within national borders rather than via dominant tech firms from abroad. But if there were prizes for irony, it's a concept that might win a few. Huang's pitch has understandably struck a chord with leaders desperate for new sources of productivity gains and for ways to avoid falling terminally behind in a tech race dominated by the US and China. Recent announcements include a partnership with French AI startup Mistral to build a cloud platform powered by 18,000 Nvidia Blackwell chips and a Germany-based industrial cloud for European manufacturing built with 10,000 Blackwell chips. It's not just Europe — Nvidia has cut big sovereign AI deals in the Middle East — but the Old Continent is where Huang sees computing capacity increase by a factor of 10 over the next two years. 'It's coming,' he said. This doesn't much look like sovereignty, though. From Nvidia's point of view, the company is certainly positioning itself as a geopolitical actor, engaging directly with heads of state like Macron as the ultimate tech enabler to boost AI adoption. That's good for Nvidia amid a wider Sino-American trade war that's seen it lose $15 billion in Chinese sales due to export controls and as Europeans become warier of US tech providers like Alphabet Inc. and Microsoft Corp. Bloomberg Intelligence last month estimated sovereign AI investments could add $10 to $15 billion in annual revenue for Nvidia in a de-globalizing world. But from Europe's point of view, we're still a long way from the tech autonomy leaders like Macron want to offer anxious voters. The hardware and infrastructure powering these big AI projects are ultimately Nvidia's, a US company with 80% market share whose dominance will be entrenched through chips that are updated or replaced every few years. To the extent that there is a European supply chain, it exists elsewhere, in the brainy engineers and open-source models offered by the likes of Mistral. But it remains to be seen if that will be enough to secure Europe's AI future when US rivals are so dominant. Mistral's €1 billion ($1.2 billion) in capital raised so far is a fraction compared with OpenAI's; and as ambitious as its plans are, Europe today has just 4.8% of estimated global AI compute power, according to Epoch AI. We've seen this movie before. France and Germany once pinned their hopes on a sovereign cloud to protect user data from the extraterritorial reach of the US and China. Today, US tech companies still account for around 70% of cloud services in Europe. And for every attempt to reduce dependence, such as the Danish municipalities quitting Microsoft, there's an opposite move like the German military's cloud deal with Google. In search, European tools promoted as alternatives to Google have relied instead on Microsoft's Bing — so when Bing went down during last year's global outage, so did they. Is it any wonder that Microsoft is now offering 'sovereign cloud' services to Europe without a hint of irony? Misnomers and fuzzy language aside, some will argue this won't matter much if Huang's vision of AI as an essential technology like electricity or the steam engine pays off. At last week's Research and Applied AI Summit, a panel I moderated compared AI sovereignty to a national airline: The flags and operations are what count, not the origin of the aluminum tube and its engines. But there have been tangible costs to not worrying enough about dependencies — like Russian natural gas or Chinese exports — and AI might be the same, according to University of Amsterdam researcher Leevi Saari. With tech still very much driven by globalized supply chains, outsourced labor and dominant vendors, what's on offer today looks more like 'sovereignty-as-a-service' — the wrapper of autonomy at high cost. After all, maybe it's the existence of alternatives like Airbus SE that makes airlines so relaxed. If AI sovereignty is a worthy goal, Europe will need to do more than come up with new wrappings for the same chips. It has advantages: talent, skills, companies like ASML Holding NV and an automotive-industrial base ripe for innovation. But what it lacks is an ecosystem with plentiful research spending, financing and end-user demand — the kind that helped US startups raise more than double the funding of their European counterparts last year, according to AVP. That won't be changed in a day, but it should be part of any sovereign vision — as should investing in chip independence to secure 'good enough' alternatives and diversify risk, according to Nathan Benaich of Air Street Capital. The alternative, he reckons, is digital colonialism. As China heads down its post-DeepSeek path and the US hugs its hemisphere closer, expect to see Huang's leather jacket more frequently. More From Bloomberg Opinion: This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners. Lionel Laurent is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist writing about the future of money and the future of Europe. Previously, he was a reporter for Reuters and Forbes. More stories like this are available on
Bloomberg
18-06-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
Nvidia's ‘Sovereign' AI Could Win a Prize for Irony
Nvidia Corp. billionaire boss Jensen Huang, clad in his signature leather jacket, has been crisscrossing European capitals and sharing the stage with the likes of Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron as he pitches 'sovereign' artificial intelligence, a vision of new data centers offering essential compute power within national borders rather than via dominant tech firms from abroad. But if there were prizes for irony, it's a concept that might win a few. Huang's pitch has understandably struck a chord with leaders desperate for new sources of productivity gains and for ways to avoid falling terminally behind in a tech race dominated by the US and China. Recent announcements include a partnership with French AI startup Mistral to build a cloud platform powered by 18,000 Nvidia Blackwell chips and a Germany-based industrial cloud for European manufacturing built with 10,000 Blackwell chips. It's not just Europe — Nvidia has cut big sovereign AI deals in the Middle East — but the Old Continent is where Huang sees computing capacity increase by a factor of 10 over the next two years. 'It's coming,' he said.
Daily Mail
17-06-2025
- Business
- Daily Mail
The $49 winter must-have item from Bunnings shoppers can't get enough of: 'Game changer'
As wet winter mornings sweep across Australia, a $49 gadget from Bunnings is going viral - and for good reason. Shoppers say the Mistral Shoe Dryer has transformed their cold-weather routine, drying soggy shoes in hours and saving families and workers from putting on damp, smelly footwear day after day. The compact unit, which uses gentle heat to dry shoes from the inside out, is designed to tackle everything from soaked school sneakers and muddy footy boots to rain-drenched work shoes and even gloves. And according to Aussie parents, it's nothing short of a seasonal saviour. 'This is a game changer! No more standing around for ages with a blow dryer on my kid's shoes,' one mum wrote. Another agreed: 'Oh my god I need one - my son plays in puddles at school and comes home with waterlogged shoes. This is awesome.' The praise hasn't just come from parents. Aussies working outdoors say it's a must-have for staying dry and comfortable between long shifts in the elements. 'For the working class men and women who work in the rain - who need to have dry shoes in the morning - this is a lifesaver,' one person said. Another added: 'It would've been nice to have that instead of walking around work with soggy boots.' Priced at $49, the Mistral Shoe Dryer is proving to be an affordable luxury for households across the country, especially those juggling active kids, outdoor jobs, or just trying to avoid musty-smelling shoes during winter. The unit is suitable for boots, sneakers, sandals, and gloves, and works by gently warming items from the inside out - helping to reduce moisture, eliminate odour, and prolong the life of your footwear. 'Perfect for people with kids who play sports or partners who work outside in the rain,' a shopper explained. Others noted its unexpected bonus: 'Great for footy boots or people who have shoes that smell.' While some high-end dryers can retail for well over $100, Bunnings' budget-friendly version has struck a chord with value-conscious Aussies. One shopper even described it as the product they 'didn't know they needed until now'. With rave reviews already stacking up online - and many warning they're quickly selling out in stores - it seems the humble shoe dryer has become this winter's surprise cult buy.
