PARIS, Oct 7 — French AI startup Mistral announced yesterday its biggest open-weight model, dubbed “Chonk”, claiming enhanced performance and security capabilities for clients seeking to keep their data private instead of relying on closed models from the likes of Anthropic and OpenAI.

The new model lets users download and customise the parameters, or “weights”, that determine how it computes to their own servers.

It is Mistral’s first major product launch since it raised €3 billion (RM4.09 billion) last month in Europe’s biggest technology fundraising ever.

The company is betting that companies and governments will increasingly want total control over their AI deployments, as opposed to using proprietary models that require handing over data to third parties and can be much more expensive.