"Microsoft's €15M Investment in AI Startup Mistral Raises European Scrutiny"

The European Commission is investigating Microsoft's €15 million investment in French startup Mistral, which recently released a large language model to compete with OpenAI's ChatGPT. Mistral's partnership with Microsoft to bring its models to Azure has raised concerns about consolidating power and stifling innovation in the AI industry. EU regulators are wary of AI mergers with Big Tech and are closely monitoring AI partnerships to ensure they do not unduly distort market dynamics. This comes as the EU is working on an AI Act to enforce rules for AI systems based on the risks they pose, with generative AI models like Mistral Large considered as "high-impact general-purpose" systems that might pose systemic risk.