Mistral AI signed a five-year partnership with Airbus and a separate agreement with BMW on Thursday, marking the Paris-based startup's push into industrial engineering applications.
Under the Airbus deal, the aerospace company will acquire licences for Mistral's full product suite, enabling deployment of AI models on-premises, in trusted clouds, or on board aircraft and spacecraft. Airbus will also gain access to Mistral's researchers and a degree of influence over the company's product roadmap, the company said. Among the identified focus areas: using AI to automate the production of technical documents, cutting time on engineering and aircraft design through simulation-based tools, deploying edge AI for tasks such as in-flight object recognition, and applying AI to sensitive defence work including cyber investigations in air-gapped, secure settings.
"This partnership paves the way for the deployment of high-impact, high-value use cases of trusted and responsible AI in aerospace," Catherine Jestin, executive vice president of digital at Airbus, said in a statement. Mistral co-founder and CTO Timothée Lacroix said the two companies would work together to "accelerate innovation, contribute to improve flight safety, and deliver greater value for customers."
The BMW partnership centers on training AI models using the automaker's archive of crash simulation data. Drawing on a crash-testing operation that generates thousands of virtual simulations weekly, BMW has amassed a historical archive exceeding one petabyte of data; the automaker intends to use that trove to build what it refers to as Large Industry Models, AI systems shaped by domain-specific engineering inputs rather than broad general training. The goal is to improve quality, accuracy, and speed in complex vehicle safety testing.
"By combining our engineering datasets with Mistral AI's model training capabilities, we are building specialized AI which supports complex development tasks," said Dr. Franz Decker, CIO and senior vice president of the BMW Group. Marjorie Janiewicz, chief revenue officer of Mistral AI, said the collaboration "shows how industry specific AI models can help solve complex engineering challenges such as crash simulation."
Financial terms for both deals were not disclosed.
According to France24, Mensch unveiled the deals while addressing hundreds of attendees at Mistral's inaugural AI conference, held in Paris. "The most important use cases for AI are located in research and development and the creation of physical objects," Mensch said at the event.
The deals come as European manufacturers seek to reduce reliance on US-based AI providers, with data sovereignty and security among their stated concerns, according to Euronews. The startup, which launched in 2023 and reached a valuation of €11.7 billion, has grown its headcount to roughly 1,000 and has set a 2026 revenue target of at least €1 billion, Mensch told Bloomberg.