Microsoft-backed French startup Mistral has launched an AI reasoning model that is set to compete with OpenAI, DeepSeek and other models.
In a tweet on 10 June, the company said the model named Magistral is the company’s first reasoning model and is designed for domain-specific, transparent, and multilingual reasoning.
Solving problems in reasoning models
In a blog post, Mistral said that reasoning models are still nascent and are plagued by several shortcomings, including Lack of specialized depth needed for domain-specific problems, limited transparency, and inconsistent reasoning in the desired language.
This is what Magistral was designed to solve. Designed with domain-specific, transparent, and multilingual reasoning in mind, it can think things through and allows for reasoning verification.
The model is being released in two variants — Magistral Small, a 24B parameter open-source version and Magistral Medium, a more powerful, enterprise version, both of which also come in open and enterprise versions.
Most notably, the model comes with Think mode and Flash Answers through its chat platform known as Le Chat, which enables users to get responses at 10x the speed compared to most competitors, making it a formidable rival to OpenAI and DeepSeek.
Magistral is also multilingual, maintaining high-fidelity reasoning across numerous languages including English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Arabic, Russian, and Simplified Chinese.
Versatile model
Apart from its multilingual nature and speed, the reasoning model also finds different applications across industries and sectors.
It can be used for general purposes in areas requiring longer thought processing and better accuracy than with non-reasoning LLMs.
Such areas range from legal research and financial forecasting to software development and creative storytelling, solving multi-step challenges where transparency and precision are critical.
The model can also be used for research, strategic planning, operational optimization, and data-driven decision making for businesses, as well as regulated industries and sectors, engineering, and content communication such as copywriting.
ReadNext
