Ecosia says it will leave Mistral and seek open models, including Chinese ones

In an interview with Politico, Christian Kroll, Ecosia’s founder and CEO, said the Berlin-based search engine will stop using Mistral after switching from ChatGPT to the French company, and will seek open models such as Qwen, GLM and Kimi. Kroll said they cost half as much and deliver more performance. He cited insufficient quality, saturated servers, the weight of nuclear power in France’s electricity mix and Mistral’s dependence on international investors as reasons for the decision. Ecosia is present in German and British public institutions, according to Xataka.

Mistral did not respond to Politico, but its chief scientist invited Ecosia to test the company’s new model, including through early access. Released on the same day as the interview, Large 4 was placed by some analysts about six months behind frontier models. Later, in an interview with EU-Startups, Kroll said the shift was focused on open models rather than country of origin, and mentioned that Ecosia might use German company Melious.