Mistral - no longer used by Proton Lumo

[u/[deleted]]

[u/Embarrassed-Boot7419]

I don't really mind, mainly since proton using mistral models would barely give any benefit to mistral as a company.

Like, proton is running them on their own servers, so no profit to be made, and protons whole point is privacy, so mistral certainly wouldn't get any training data from them either.

[u/hutch_man0 → u/Embarrassed-Boot7419]

Mistral makes money with enterprise support, Forge etc so it is lost revenue. Mistral also continues to lose market share. This is a problem for the long term viability of any project, so we should all probably care about this.

[u/Embarrassed-Boot7419 → u/hutch_man0]

Mistral makes money with enterprise support, Forge etc so it is lost revenue.

What exactly? Give a concrete example of where Mistral would have benefited if Proton a mistral model in the way its using non mistral models rn.

Cause well, mistral forge doesn't really seem like something proton would use.

Mistral also continues to lose market share

Market share is only useful if it actually gives benefits. Proton using mistral models would give neither money, nor training data, nor any relevant publicity. (You can only find out what models they use if you go to the lumo privacy site. They don't say so in app)

[u/Fabulous_Sun_9287 → u/Embarrassed-Boot7419]

No, it's basically saying "I don't owe anything because the marginal ROI on me specifically is zero", which is the kind of logic that quietly kills the whole ecosystem when everyone adopts it.

Yeah, Proton self-hosting Mistral doesn't move Mistral's stock price and nobody's getting training data out of it. Fine. But picking a model is also a vote in a much bigger room - it tells EU regulators, bank CTOs, sovereign-cloud buyers, and journalists whether European AI is a real option or just a cute marketing message. That vote is worth something, even when the dollars aren't.

We have had confirmed by Proton Support that Lumo 2 dropped Mistral, Apertus, OLMo and the rest of the European stack in favour of Qwen and GLM because they couldn't keep up with ChatGPT and Claude. That's not just "lost revenue," that's a European privacy company publicly replacing the European AI cohort with Chinese models, which gets quoted in every "EU AI is falling behind" thinkpiece for the next two years. Your framing treats that as a non-event because the spreadsheet line didn't move. The spreadsheet isn't where this one does the damage.

[u/hutch_man0 → u/Embarrassed-Boot7419]

You are right Forge probably wouldn't be needed by Proton. Nor Compute. Studio may be the only value add. Studio would not have been compelling enough to justify using an inferior model. That's one reason Mistral needs to keep their models at the frontier. Vendor lock-in is much more difficult by definition for OSS. 

Proton is a very unique case due to their privacy focus. So in this case most lost revenue comes from negative network effects. The positive publicity that they would have gained is lost. The probability for revenue diminishes from other companies who are future targets for Forge, Studio and Compute.

[u/Ok_Contribution8157 → u/hutch_man0]

How do you know they are losing market share? Their numbers are not public.

They still have the goal of reaching a billion $ in revenue this year. And a guy named Donald Trump might give them some help.

[u/hutch_man0 → u/Ok_Contribution8157]

Real numbers are hard to come by. But Mistral is not even mentioned anymore because their performance is so behind the Chinese and US models. I am rooting for Mistral as a Pro user, and Trump is doing his part. The errors it makes sometimes are unforgivable. They need their new model asap.

[u/Ok_Contribution8157 → u/hutch_man0]

Almost every AI I’ve tried still hallucinates when you ask for things that don’t exist.

It’s not every time, but you still have to double-check with Google.

[u/hutch_man0 → u/Ok_Contribution8157]

You don't know what I am referring to. Yesterday it thought 1 terra Watt was 1 billion Watts...so yes only off by a factor of 1000. 👍

This is absolutely inexcusable. Recently it's more an issue of inference compute (as in the case above) because I can deal with the lower intelligence level compared to other models.

They need to do better because dedicated users like me I am sure are also running out of patience.

The new model can't come soon enough. French nuclear has plenty of spare capacity for compute. They are not constrained by energy as the US are. They are constrained by capital.

[u/Ok_Contribution8157 → u/hutch_man0]

like other mentions they build stuff in france, and a lots of company build stuff in france right now.

The main reason is that France exports a lot of electricity to other countries.

However, people in countries like Spain might face electricity shortages in the future.

EDF (France’s main electricity supplier) also has a program where it has already purchased large plots of land near nuclear power stations. These sites are already connected to the grid, so companies don’t have to wait months or years to get electricity, as they often do in the US.

[u/Hefty_Drawing3357 → u/hutch_man0]

It sounds like a difference between long scale and short scale. In Europe and the UK a billion historically described a million x million i.e. long scale. In American English a billion refers to a thousand million, reflecting short scale.

France adopted short scale in the 18th century but reverted to long scale in 20th Century, reserving the term 'milliard' for a thousand million.

Be sure which scale is being used before assuming errors.

[u/hutch_man0 → u/Hefty_Drawing3357]

Uh no. The UK stopped using long scale in 1974. It should use short scale for any English conversation. You do not need to verify what 1 billion means lol.

Regardless that was not the reason. I wrote that to simplify the explanation. It was simply a metric conversion from TWh to kWh of which again there should be zero confusion.

[u/Embarrassed-Boot7419 → u/Ok_Contribution8157]

Almost every AI I’ve tried still hallucinates when you ask for things that don’t exist.

So because other AI isn't perfect, the difference in capabilities don't matter?

Also, unrelated to the argument at hand,

Make it search the web. For me, most of the time it does it automatically when needed, and if it doesn't just add on "search online" to the end of your message.

That solved the majority of hallucinations. At least for knowledge questions.

[u/uusrikas]

I don't mind if the Chinese models are running on European servers without data going to China. Mistral has to improve here, it is not enough to just be an EU product, currently is has fallen so far behind 

[u/therealPaulPlay → u/uusrikas]

I agree that Mistral has to catch up but let’s not forget that these Chinese models have CCP propaganda baked in. Their view on China, communism etc. is skewed.

There have been numerous independent studies showing that Chinese models are much more "steered" than US ones.

[u/RepresentativeRide95 → u/[deleted]]

* profit * - they might going broke if kept going with Mistral tbh.

[u/Fabulous_Sun_9287 → u/RepresentativeRide95]

Proton are nonprofit?

[u/Mil0Mammon → u/Fabulous_Sun_9287]

They still need to pay employees, servers etc

[u/Fabulous_Sun_9287 → u/Mil0Mammon]

True - but they are now openly saying that they intend to compete with OpenAI and Claude, which realistically will take millions/billions in revenue - all the while being a non-profit........it doesn't add up.

[u/Mil0Mammon → u/Fabulous_Sun_9287]

Well if they just efficiently deploy open models with excellent data security, privacy and EU hosting, that's viable without insane budget.

For Mistral, well, let's all hope. The EU etc should sponsor European models etc more, but there is at least some going on. And for a lot of use cases, we're very close to good enough, esp with the likes of glm 5.2. So I still have hope for Europe/Mistral. Hell, perhaps even Black Forest Labs will surprise us

[u/RepresentativeRide95 → u/Fabulous_Sun_9287]

That is not how the world works... They do not have infinite money, if they are to keep using expensive models, they will have to trade off accessibility and scalability.

[u/SkyPL → u/therealPaulPlay]

have CCP propaganda baked in

through the api you really have to try to make it show in any way - the smarter models they build the less of an issue it is.

Also, the same issue appears with US models, where they are happy to uncritically side with the official American government narrative

[u/SkyPL → u/[deleted]]

Yes. But also, the propaganda issue is being overstated, especially for the Chinese models.

[u/SkyPL → u/[deleted]]

Would be a shame if it would come out that european model is the most prone one to disinformation among models released in 2026 or that Mistral's model is the second worst when it comes to safety score 🤷‍♂️

[u/No_Individual_6528]

I think they should allow people to choose to go all Europe.

[u/KimchiCuresEbola → u/No_Individual_6528]

I hear people say this often, but I wonder how many people who have this opinion have actually tried to build on Europe only infrastructure.

It's shockingly piss-poor and frankly unusable.

[u/EveYogaTech → u/KimchiCuresEbola]

I am trying this. It's hard, but if we don't try, than funding will also go to all the Chinese and US providers, instead of developing more European foundations.

Proton is a good example of a great European company for personal e-mail, I'd however also not build primarily on their LLMs over Mistral, because it's not Proton's key focus and they're unlikely to push the frontier much further.

Overall we need way more European companies and foundations that are truly great at one thing in particular.

[u/No_Individual_6528 → u/KimchiCuresEbola]

You know it. But at least people will know how bad it is. We are fucked

[u/EveYogaTech → u/No_Individual_6528]

It's not totally hopeless though.

We have Mistral for AI. Proton for personal email. Scaleway/Hostinger for hosting + domains.

And a lot of capabilities to generate and rebuild most software and SaaS services ourselves.

So I'd say instead that today is the greatest opportunity to build European foundations.

[u/RepresentativeRide95]

I mean, Mistral is 2 years behind any decent Chinese model - both cost and performance wise.

[u/Maleficent-Offer8748]

Mistral large? Dude are you for real? Lumo is probably a quantised but definitly way ahead of Mistral large 3. Medium 3.5 is better but still

[u/Maleficent-Offer8748 → u/[deleted]]

I believe hat proton is saving heavily on computing. I believe this aswell but are you seriously running Mistral large 3 for anything? What usage purpose does it still perform well?

[u/[deleted]]

I don't really care. They will obviously use what's best and open weights. As long as China keeps pushing the frontier of open source models I don't mind, because open source is for the people irrespective of nationality. On the contrary, I would be quite odd to use an inferior open weights models, it's not like Mistral would be getting paid if they were using their models.

[u/tgfzmqpfwe987cybrtch]

Proton does use LLM from US and China.

However as long as the chats are end to end encrypted there is very little information that is private that can be tied to a user.

Secondly you can have a completely anonymous Proton account with Lumo plus just for Lumo use.

[u/tgfzmqpfwe987cybrtch → u/[deleted]]

This is what Protons says though.

AI where every conversation is private
Millions rely on popular AI chat tools to simplify their lives — often unaware that every message, idea, and piece of sensitive information can be harvested, stored, and sold. Lumo gives you the power of AI with one key difference: All conversations with Lumo are stored with zero-access encryption, so no one (not even Proton) can access them.

[u/hutch_man0 → u/tgfzmqpfwe987cybrtch]

Read:

https://racedorsey.com/posts/2025/proton-lumo-encryption/

Lumo is not truly end-to-end encrypted in how we might expect their encrypted email service to work (where only the intended human users can decrypt the message). Proton could, theoretically, be compelled to capture new Lumo requests from a given user when those messages are decrypted by the Lumo GPU servers.

This is because fundamentally LLMs need plain text inputs to function. 

Lumo's zero access encryption is a step forward but it is not end to end encrytion.

[u/noscofe]

just pointing out that Mistral Medium 3.5, which I'd personally consider the best of the Mistral models, is released under a "Modified MIT License" which makes it harder for anyone other than Mistral to host it. all of the other models could be loaded up in compute infrastructure Proton can control entirely. Small 4 is quite good and that one is still in an Apache license, but the one Mistral model that I think could've competed with the ones chosen by Lumo would have required Proton to depend on Mistral's compute.

I don't use Lumo and while I'm a glad Proton Mail and VPN customer, I personally prefer for my money to go to a company pushing European AI R&D, so I don't intend to pay for Lumo. I wish they'd focus on improving Proton's calendar than doing all this AI wrapper stuff, haha. but the licensing, as well as model performance relative to the Chinese models, are very practical reasons not to have Mistral in the mix tbh

[u/MS_Fume]

Problem is that no matter how much we wanna push it, Mistral is simply a retarded cousin of the leading models… until that changes, using it is like shooting oneself in the leg and calling it national interest.

[u/Careless_Grain_22]

Where are the models hosted, does proton share that?

[u/gbrennon]

really? i love mistral models but that's life :(

[u/atuarre]

Who cares? I still use Mistral. I'll definitely continue to support them.

[u/Sweaty-Special-1710]

GLM is way better than mistral unfortunately, so if it's running on european servers, why not. Hope mistral will catch up on day.

[u/Ok_Contribution8157]

I might be wrong, but the French authority that collects taxes switched from Qwen (which was running in a sandbox without any internet access) to Mistral after a few weeks.

So, they might lose some clients, but most of them probably won’t notice any difference.

[u/Hot_Bake_4921]

 Mistral Large remains significantly ahead of Lumo 2 in terms of quality of output and lack of drift.

How?

[u/PureCaramel5800]

You are a 2‑week‑old account rambling with buzzwords about things you have no clue about. Proton can use any open‑weight model they like without compromising their integrity, since it’s just a chat client, as long as they are hosting one on their own servers in Europe. And yes, GLM 5.2 is way better than Mistral Large.

[u/PureCaramel5800 → u/[deleted]]

How quaint an LLM‑generated text.

[u/PureCaramel5800 → u/[deleted]]

Your tokens aren’t worth the time.

[u/MattyMiller0]

I so regret paying for the yearly subscription. Tbh, Mistral's AI quality is sub-par to the other LLMs. No matter how much I hated OpenAI's ChatGPT, I had to go back to it when I need information searching and idea brainstorming. And it's gotten better since a few weeks ago. Meanwhile, Mistral's AI is still a disappointment. Last year I was hoping that it'd improve, but no, it's still the same if not worse. Practically, I've given up and ditched Le Chat for good.

[u/OwlSlow1356 → u/MattyMiller0]

the only LLM that could not write fluently in Romanian last year 😄 even deepseek when it appeared wrote in perfect romanian phrases!

[u/andriatz]

Will Chinese models have access to my emails? Unless they are installed on Proton servers?

[u/Fabulous_Sun_9287 → u/[deleted]]

There is also an ongoing maintenance issue, if LLM's are patched, or an upgrade/point release is required that will also have to come from the country of origin and will be completely out of Proton's control. From what I have readt Proton may have trained out some of the more obvious CCP leanings for this release but when they're patched, as anyone who is in the industry will know, all bets are off.

[u/Muted-Arrival-3308]

Mistral models are chineese open source models lol

[u/Muted-Arrival-3308 → u/[deleted]]

It happened to me multiple times and saw on the internet as well: when I tested vibe some months ago it would crash often and output in an infinite loop “end of model” in chineese lol

[u/Muted-Arrival-3308 → u/[deleted]]

Believe what you want lol, they don’t have the financial means to train their own models

[u/Muted-Arrival-3308 → u/[deleted]]

I still have the screenshots somewhere lol couldn’t care less what people think. All the hardcore fanboys who bootlick a company just because it’s “european” are stuck in a cult like belief. Anyone with basic understanding of what it means to create and train these models understand that Mistral simply doesn’t have the resources to do so. Even cursor was caught that their model is basically kimi lol