French AI startup Mistral is taking the fight to its US and Chinese rivals with the launch of Europe's first AI reasoning model.
Mistral, recognised as Europe’s best homegrown prospect in the generative AI race, introduced two models: Magistral Small, an open-source model available for download on Hugging Face, and Magistral Medium, a more powerful version targeting business customers. The new models allow the AI tool to generate intermediate steps and logical pathways when solving complex tasks.
“The best human thinking isn’t linear — it weaves through logic, insight, uncertainty, and discovery. Reasoning language models have enabled us to augment and delegate complex thinking and deep understanding to AI, improving our ability to work through problems requiring precise, step-by-step deliberation and analysis.” Mistral said in a statement.
The shift could help the French company narrow the AI innovation gap with much larger players in the US and China. Companies such as OpenAI, Google, and China’s DeepSeek have also introduced their own open-source reasoning models.
This follows news rumoured by TechCrunch that Mistral is raising $649 million in its next round of funding, valuing it at $6 billion.
In the SaaS space, San Francisco-based Linear completed a $82 million Series C funding round on Tuesday. This round of funding values Linear at $1.25 billion and brings its total raised to $134 million.
Linear offers developer workflow tools that compete directly with many of Atlassian’s products. These tools help teams manage bugs, feature requests, and product development pipelines. The startup currently has around 80 employees and 15,000 customers, and claims that its profits grew by 280% in the past year.
A study from researchers at the University of Cambridge has sent a stark reminder to product teams with the increase in data collection amongst products. The study warned that period-tracker apps are harvesting vast amounts of sensitive user data, putting women’s privacy and safety at risk.
Researchers found that many menstrual apps collect data on users’ health, reproductive choices, sexual activity, contraception, medication, and hormone levels, which can then be packaged and sold at scale to advertisers and data brokers.
Dr Stefanie Felsberger, the report’s lead author, said: “Menstrual cycle tracking apps are presented as empowering women and addressing the gender health gap. Yet the business model behind their services rests on commercial use, selling user data and insights to third parties for profit.”
“There are real and frightening privacy and safety risks to women as a result of the commodification of the data collected by cycle tracking app companies.” Dr Felsberger added. The report calls for tighter regulation, meaningful consent standards, and the development of secure public alternatives to commercial tracking products. These findings add to the mounting scrutiny of tech companies, following earlier research by King's College London showing widespread worries over data-sharing practices, despite many companies declaring strong privacy protections.
