Mistral AI has released Mistral Small 3.1, a new open-source AI model with only 24 billion parameters that reportedly outperforms larger models from competitors like OpenAI. According to Michael Nuñez’s article, the French startup claims their model matches or exceeds the capabilities of GPT-4o Mini while offering text and image processing, multilingual support, and a 128,000 token context window. The model is available under the Apache 2.0 license, contrasting with the increasingly restrictive approach of larger competitors. Founded in 2023 by former researchers from Google DeepMind and Meta, Mistral has positioned itself as Europe’s leading AI startup with a $6 billion valuation. The company emphasizes efficiency and European digital sovereignty as key differentiators from American tech giants, allowing their model to run on relatively modest hardware like a single RTX 4090 graphics card.