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Mistral's latest open-source release shows smaller models beat large ones - here's why

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ZDNET's key takeaways

Mistral 3 is designed for customization and privacy.

Its smaller multimodal models can run on single GPUs.

Mistral hopes the models create "distributed intelligence."

Another open-source model has joined the ever-expanding AI race, this time from boutique French AI lab Mistral -- and it's going small where most other labs go big.

Mistral 3, a family of four open-source models released by the company on Tuesday, offers "unprecedented flexibility and control for enterprises and developers," according to the announcement. The suite includes a large model, two mid-size models, and a smaller edition, aiming to address a wider variety of needs.

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"This spectrum of models further extends our customers' applied AI capabilities to robotics, autonomous drones, and small on-device applications without network access, as well as the world's largest enterprise agentic workflows," Mistral wrote in the release. More on what that means in practice below.

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