GoKawiilFrench startup Mistral AI is exploring designing its own chips and may eventually develop them, CEO Arthur Mensch told CNBC.
It is the first comment made by Mensch about Mistral's semiconductor ambitions, underscoring how the company is looking to control more of its infrastructure as it competes with U.S. heavyweights OpenAI and Anthropic.
"Of course, it is interesting," Mensch said about the prospect of Mistral developing its own chips, adding that the company is not ruling it out.
Mensch said that custom chips allow a company to "lower the cost of deploying tokens to meaningful extents." Tokens are units of data processed by AI models.
"Owning the chips may come, I think it should come at some point, but for now we are relying on Nvidia , which is a great partner to us, and we're testing a few things here and there," Mensch told CNBC.
Mistral, which is valued at nearly 12 billion euros, develops AI models but is also investing in building data centers with Nvidia chips. The Paris-headquartered firm is often seen as Europe's answer to OpenAI and Anthropic.
The company is focused on enterprise and counts companies such as chip equipment giant ASML among its top customers.
If Mistral were to develop its own chips, it would follow in the footsteps of the big American hyperscalers such as Amazon and Google , which have designed and deployed their own semiconductors in their data centers.
Custom chips, also known as an application-specific integrated circuit, are seen as a way for hyperscalers to have more control over their hardware and software integrations, potentially offering a differentiated product from competitors.