BNP Paribas has inked a multi-year agreement with Mistral AI, covering all of the French artificial intelligence giant’s commercial models.

BNP Paribas’s global markets unit has been experimenting with Mistral AI’s models since last year, with “strong results”. The bank is now piloting the technology across several divisions.

The new deal ensures that it gets access to current and future commercial models across all the bank’s business lines. By using Mistral AI Large Language Models, it is already developing a number of use cases in customer support, sales, IT and other areas.

Founded by former Google Deep Mind and Meta AI scientists, Mistral AI has been pitched as a European OpenAI rival and has already raised more than EUR1 billion, with BNP Paribas among the investors.

Mistral AI says its offering and strategy is complementary to highly regulated institutions, facilitating controlled deployment of cutting-edge models on premises.

Sophie Heller, COO, BNP Paribas commercial, personal banking and services, says: “This partnership with Mistral AI marks a further step in developing hyper-personalised digital services for our customers.

“As an example, Gen AI will allow us to launch high quality virtual assistants to answer clients’ questions 24/7 and to simplify end-to-end processes, enhancing the way our teams support clients.”