The head of one of Europe’s busiest AI startups said he expects AI technology to surpass big language models this year.
Arthur Mensch, CEO of French AI company Mistral, told CNBC that he sees the focus of AI products in general moving away from 2025 models and more toward “systems” that integrate models and contextual business data.
“I think the focus should shift to systems,” Mensch told CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal in an interview on Tuesday. “Models are part of a system, but systems are connected to data, connected to tools, able to actually do things on your behalf, able to act in an agentic way.”
Founded just two years ago, Mistral has quickly become one of Europe’s hottest AI companies, reaching an estimate of $6 billion and the support of the American technology giant Microsoft last year. The startup, which is considered a competitor to OpenAI, is behind the development of several models of large open source languages.
We saw a lot last year the tech industry is buzzing about so-called AI “agents.” This refers to the idea of AI assistants that can take actions independently with limited human supervision. Unlike AI chatbots like ChatGPT, models are meant to work mostly in the background.
Mensch sees AI systems in the future benefiting from large language models integrated into them. He said that by connecting models with relevant contextual data, they will become better at offering customized solutions for different business needs.
“That’s where this changes,” Mensch said. “It also means that the industry that adopts it will distill its expertise into those systems — and that’s where it’s going to be needed to actually bring the value of AI to those industries.”
It’s an AI talk at the annual forum of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The event is known for bringing together the world’s most influential business and political leaders.
On the Davos Promenade – which is the focal point of the annual event – major companies from Salesforce to Workday have taken over cafes, shops and restaurants, building temporary meeting and event spaces with branding heavily emblazoned with the word “AI”.
