French AI company announces new, private model

French tech company Mistral on Tuesday announced the upcoming release of "Le Chonk," its biggest AI open-weight model, aimed at users wanting to keep their data private. Popular AI models from companies like Anthropic and OpenAI rely on closed models. Le Chonk, officially named Mistral Large 4, will be made publicly available on October 27, with cybersecurity experts and government authorities receiving access to a version of the model with fewer safety restrictions to test its capabilities. Last month, Mistral raised €3 billion euros ($3.4 billion), Europe's biggest technology fundraising. The new AI model allows users to download and customize "weights" that determine how it computes on their own servers.