Mistral Large 4: "Le Chonk"

(mistral.ai)

503 points | by j-bu 3 hours ago

32 comments

  • xpct 2 hours ago
    I don't know why, but I personally find Mistral's marketing strategy much more appealing than that of other companies.

    For example, there's something about Anthropic's picked design and their little Claude avatars that's unsettling to me.

    • booty 1 hour ago
      Sans context, I really like the Anthropic and Claude's faux-academic, minimal-ish, intellectual-ish branding.

      (Especially the way it looked ~12 months ago -- it's gotten more cluttered since then. Perhaps unavoidably, as the breadth of their offerings has grown)

      But over time it's begun to feel like unsettling cognitive dissonance as their ambitions grow and the stuff to worry about has piled up.

      • fodkodrasz 57 minutes ago
        > faux-academic, minimal-ish, intellectual-ish branding

        By this you sourely don't mean the messages shown in Claude Code, where Pi would show "Working..."

        Academic style: Cooking... Sautéeing... Julienning... and similar annoying faux-brogrammer moody status messages.

        • nine_k 33 minutes ago
          It's straight from The Sims [1], which seems quite appropriate :)

          [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sims

          • Y_Y 11 minutes ago
            You didn't have to look at "reticulating splines" all day long though. Anyway that stuff came from Sim City.
    • isoprophlex 1 hour ago
      The logo isnt a stylized butthole. That sure helps endear me to them.
      • monocularvision 18 minutes ago
        I know the whole “AI logos look like buttholes” thing is a joke for most people, but I really speaks to the pornification of our society. I would never have thought “butthole” looking at any of their logos.
        • b473a 5 minutes ago
          I didn't know this was a thing and I typed "AI logos look like buttholes" into Google and the AI overview response started "You are completely right."

          Have Google's models achieved the ability to throw shade?

        • trollbridge 8 minutes ago
          It reminds me of looking at my cat’s hind end, which is not a good brand association. Has nothing to do with “pontification”.
        • Y_Y 10 minutes ago
          Good point, it could be any kind of sphincter.
      • LarsDu88 23 minutes ago
        Why was I about to write this exact same comment, and why did you beat me to it?
      • smusamashah 1 hour ago
        If it looks like that you, you will be seeing it everywhere.
      • financetechbro 44 minutes ago
        You are assuming that OP is not a fan of buttholes
    • fidotron 2 hours ago
      The entire Anthropic branding is religious kitsch - deeply off putting, but apparently quite reflective of their reality.
    • walrus01 2 hours ago
      I think there's such a thing as throwing too many marketing and sales people and too much polishing and "refinement" at something. I see in new product announcements from Microsoft as well. It's like seeing someone try too hard to impress you.
      • InsideOutSanta 1 hour ago
        They've polished all personality out of their companies.
    • oytis 2 hours ago
      And their cookie banner. Never thought I would like a cookie banner
    • YeahThisIsMe 1 hour ago
      I do my best to avoid any AI marketing because I extremely despise it. I just haven't quite decided on my new profession, yet, but it's either going to be with plants or with animals.
  • vessenes 2 hours ago
    Very nice progress. Also I respect putting Kimi on those charts. Regardless of if they are beating the Pareto frontier (not now), model diversity is a good thing for humanity — I’m hopeful for the team to keep increasing their gains.
  • danslo 2 hours ago
    Open weight, European, competes with GLM-5.3 on cybersecurity. What's not to like?
    • Culonavirus 1 hour ago
      It's French, duh. They'll probably surrender half of the company to the Germans after receiving a strongly (compound-)worded letter.
      • BoxOfRain 35 minutes ago
        I'm literally English and I feel the need to defend the French here, they're among the most successful military powers in the world historically speaking. It's hardly fair to judge a thousand years of French military history by the outcome of one war where they didn't do well.
        • mjburgess 7 minutes ago
          One imagines it may have been a joke
  • duiker101 1 hour ago
    The main thing I always get away from the comparison tables of these "big" models, is how well Deepseek v4.1 Flash performs. While still being the cheapest model by a long shot.
  • chevman 3 hours ago
    This is awesome, one of the coolest Pokemon ever too for those that don't follow that universe :)

    https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Lechonk_(Pok%C3%A9mo...

    • maelito 1 hour ago
      Was wondering what Le Chonk meant (not French).
      • sofixa 1 hour ago
        It's a joke, chonky is used to refer to fat cats, and there was a joke meme over the summer that Mistral are going to release a new model, Le Chaton Fat (chaton is kitten in French). The name is a nod to the memes.
        • NekkoDroid 7 minutes ago
          > Le Chaton Fat

          I've read it a few times and I always processed it as "Le Chateau Fat" ("The fat castle"), which I guess also kinda works. I guess it is mostly because my french is so rusty I forgot (or maybe never learned?) what chaton meant.

  • DevKoala 1 hour ago
    One step closer to Le Chaton Fat.
    • PoignardAzur 1 hour ago
      Can't wait until Mistral starts adopting fancy product line names.

      Soon we'll have Mistral 6 Chaton, Mistral 6 Guépard, Mistral 6 Tigre, Mistral 6 Dents-de-sabre, Mistral 6 Beast King, etc.

    • cedws 14 minutes ago
      Le Chaton Fat development was cancelled internally after it broke loose into the treat box.
  • ktosobcy 23 minutes ago
    Awesome!

    All things considered I'm more inclained to pay for EU-based AI in the end (supporting local company and most likely being more aligned with EU regulations…)

  • blauditore 9 minutes ago
    What's up with the name? It reminds me of my teenage self trying to speak in funny memes.
  • rglover 2 hours ago
    Excited to try this. The low costs v. benchmarks alone here are worth a serious test. K3 has been my daily driver for a month or two now and it's dramatically reduced token spend (while not having much of a negative impact on productivity).

    This was the era of the AI race I was waiting for.

    • netvarun 2 hours ago
      Curious now that SOL is cheaper than k3 - is k3 still your primary workhorse?
      • rglover 58 minutes ago
        Haven't tried it yet. It looks like sol is a hair more expensive on input, a hair less expensive on output ($2/in, $10/out per 1m, K3 = $0.82/in, $13/out per 1m).
  • bartstp 2 hours ago
    How could I resist switching to a model named after my cat!?
    • laserbeam 2 hours ago
      Stats be damned irrelevant. The naming is good with this one!
    • volkk 1 hour ago
      you and 10k other redditors
  • londons_explore 16 minutes ago
    Still a long way behind closed models sadly :-( The gap between open and closed seems the biggest it's been for a year or two.
  • amelius 2 hours ago
  • brendong 44 minutes ago
    Is the reason for the massive gains in certain benchmarks due to distillation from the other lead models hence the slightly "under" pattern seen in the comparison charts?
  • carodgers 31 minutes ago
    Without exaggeration, given a choice between models, I would pay for Mistral's model over Anthropic's based on the name alone, completely ignoring features or other technical considerations. The name is playful and is such a refreshing contrast to Anthropic's (and OpenAI's) doomsaying, scaremongering, and god-posturing.
  • juliennakache 1 hour ago
    Is that a reference to LeChuck in Monkey Island? Love that game!
  • aennassiri 2 hours ago
    Excited to see this! Nice that they are saying this is just a first step.

    Give them more compute!

  • taspeotis 3 hours ago
    • stronglikedan 2 hours ago
      Of course not. That's clearly a different URL.
  • timcobb 2 hours ago
    > Trained from scratch

    How are they training without pirating the Z library corpus and all that?

    • sigmar 1 hour ago
      I interpret "scratch" to mean brand new weights. Not that they aren't training on a corpus of human text
      • timcobb 53 minutes ago
        Right but how did they get a corpus, how do they compete legally without distillation?
        • nolok 14 minutes ago
          [dead]
  • maz1b 2 hours ago
    I'm glad they're keeping at it!
  • tosh 3 hours ago
    sorting the charts like that gives off weird vibes
    • jasonjmcghee 2 hours ago
      Had the same thought - feels chart crime adjacent
    • lern_too_spel 2 hours ago
      Bar charts should start at zero. If they don't start at zero, there should be a clear visual indicator that the chart has been trimmed without having to read the axis labels. I hate that this has to be repeated so often that it has become a cliché.
  • theturtletalks 2 hours ago
    A bit disappointing to see it still lagging behind Chinese open models. Those Chinese models are pushing proprietary models to raise the bar, but we need equally strong non-Chinese open models to challenge the Chinese ones in turn.
  • charcircuit 30 minutes ago
    >Frontier performance

    * proceeds to not compare to Opus 5.5

    • super256 22 minutes ago
      They say "open weights frontier performance". Of course they aren't comparing to Anthropic, because they are not putting their weights online.
  • redanddead 2 hours ago
    better than K3 and DS4, cool
  • plastic-enjoyer 2 hours ago
    We are so back
  • ChrisArchitect 2 hours ago
  • Razengan 2 hours ago
    Awh I was half expecting a zombie pirate..
  • clavicle1009 3 hours ago
    YES finally
  • spwa4 3 hours ago
    Don't believe Mistral. They're wrong. It's really called "Le chaton fat".

    Also 1T-A49B. Weights currently closed but promise to open source them by the end of the month.

    Great release movie.

    • alterom 3 hours ago
      >Don't believe Mistral. They're wrong. It's really called "Le chaton fat".

      OpenAI's therapist: Le Chaton Fat isn't real and cannot hurt you

      Le Chaton Fat:

  • baggachipz 3 hours ago
    Now THAT'S how you name a model. Take note, others.
  • __natty__ 2 hours ago
    [flagged]
  • catlover76 2 hours ago
    [dead]
  • sinan-faizal 2 hours ago
    i subbmitted a partnership proposal in your contact.