Ecosia founder clarifies move away from Mistral – It’s about open models, not China

What happened

EXCLUSIVE: Ecosia founder clarifies move away from Mistral – It’s about open models, not China, according to EU-Startups. Ecosia’s decision to drop French AI provider Mistral is not a move towards Chinese technology, but rather a shift towards more affordable, energy-efficient open AI models, founder and CEO Christian Kroll clarified in a conversation with EU-Startups. The Berlin-based search engine recently made headlines after POLITICO reported that it was replacing Mistral with open models, including Chinese offerings such as Alibaba’s Qwen, Z.ai’s GLM and Moonshot AI’s Kimi.

However, Christian stressed that the company’s focus is on open models rather than their country of origin. These offer lower costs, greater flexibility and reduced energy consumption, aligning with Ecosia’s environmental mission.