Ecosia ditches Mistral for Chinese open-source AI models

German search engine Ecosia has dropped French AI model Mistral and switched to Chinese open-source models. CEO Christian Kroll said Mistral's quality was disappointing, and the model now trails rivals by about a year.

Earlier, Ecosia left OpenAI from the US for Mistral, but ran into frequent server overload problems. It also questioned whether Mistral could meet green goals and stay neutral, noting it relies on international investors and is not truly sovereign.

Kroll believes China's push for open-source AI models is a big chance for Europe. Europe missed the first wave of AI, but can now use strong open-source models instead of spending billions training its own.

Ecosia now works with Melious, using Chinese models Qwen, GLM and Kimi. Costs dropped by half, and performance improved.