Mistral's AI assistant, Le Chat, launched on February 6, 2025, achieved over one million downloads in just 13 days, marking a significant milestone for the company.

While Mistral provides Le Chat's core capabilities for free, users can subscribe to a Pro version for $14.99 per month, which unlocks advanced features and unlimited messaging.

French President Emmanuel Macron has publicly endorsed Le Chat, promoting it over OpenAI's ChatGPT during a recent TV interview.

Founded in April 2023 and based in Paris, Mistral aims to democratize AI with open-source models and is currently valued at €5.8 billion ($6 billion) as of June 2024.

Available on both iOS and Android, Le Chat offers features such as real-time web search, document analysis, image generation, and code execution.

Le Chat quickly rose to the top position for free downloads on the iOS App Store in France shortly after its release.

One of the standout features of Le Chat is Flash Answers, which delivers responses at speeds of up to 1,000 words per second, claiming to be the fastest among chat assistants.

In addition to Le Chat, DeepSeek, another AI mobile app, also gained significant traction, hitting one million downloads shortly after its launch on January 10, 2025.

Macron believes that Mistral could become a major player in the global AI landscape and has encouraged the public to download Le Chat.

Mistral plans to maintain its independence while preparing for an initial public offering, having secured over £1 billion from investors including Microsoft and NVIDIA.

In a competitive AI assistant market, Mistral faces challenges from major tech companies like Google's Gemini and Microsoft's Copilot.

For context, OpenAI's ChatGPT reached one million downloads in just five days, highlighting the competitive nature of AI chatbots.