If you follow the artificial intelligence industry, Mistral He should be a household name by now. The $6 billion French AI startup is arguably the largest AI company working on foundation models in Europe.
Alan, on the other hand, is not as well known. Unicorn health insurance has been quietly growing into a digital companion for your health. Alan Insurance covers more than 680,000 people in a few countries.
The link between these two companies is Jean-Charles Samuelien Werf, co-founder CEO of Alan and co-founder advisor of Mistral.
Published by Bloomberg Strange story An explanation of his role and some thoughts on Mistral’s origin story. “Arthur Mensch is the public face of French AI pioneer Mistral, but another startup CEO played a crucial role in its $6 billion valuation,” Bloomberg wrote. Although Samuelian-Werve’s name has been listed as a co-founder advisor since Mistral’s inception, no one has given him much credit for the founding and growth of the French AI company.
According to Bloomberg, Samuelian-Werve saw the AI boom before ChatGPT was released. He first reached out to Xavier Neal, the telecommunications billionaire behind it F station and Kima projectsto create a non-profit organization working with artificial intelligence.
But when Samuelian Werf met Arthur Mensch and the other Mistral founders, he abandoned the nonprofit idea in favor of what is now known as Mistral. Around the same time, Alan’s other co-founder and CTO Charles Gorintin as well as former digital minister Cédric O also became founding advisors to the Paris-based AI juggernaut.
According to Bloomberg, Samuelian-Werve convinced Lightspeed to lead Mistral’s seed round and approached several investors who ended up backing the AI startup. We reached out to Mistral for a response to the story, and how it credits Samuelian-Werve with its founding and growth. We will update this post with any new information we receive.
In February 2024, Samuelian Werf mentioned his interest in AI when he presented financial results to Allan.
“We continue to invest in AI across ALAN. As you know, I am a co-founder and board member of Mirsalal. But this speaks to the fact that we have been investing for a very long time in AI at ALAN — even before the Generative AI hype — to reduce management costs.” We have, to be the most efficient in the market, to provide the best services, and also to create new services, “and certainly in 2024 we will announce some new services related to generative artificial intelligence, which is very exciting for us,” Samuelian Werf said at the time for us.”
In November 2024, Alan introduced an AI chatbot called Mo. What makes Mo different from regular chatbots is that the doctor checks the answers within 15 minutes. They can either confirm medical advice or correct what was said in the conversation.
As for Xavier Neal? He ended up funding Qotai, a French AI research lab focused on developing open source AI (really). But he hasn’t completely parted ways with Mistral, as he also invested in Mistral’s seed round.
Today, Mistral’s office is still located in the same building as Alain’s office, near the Canal Saint-Martin in Paris. Samuelian Werf and Mensch still met once a week to discuss Mistral strategy. Alan is also a contributor to Mistral.
In the Bloomberg file, Samuelian Werf confirmed that Mistral is not for sale, confirming what Mensch said a few days ago at the World Economic Forum in Davos. This topic – as well as the relationship between Alain and Mistral – is sure to come up again next month during the AI Action Summit in Paris. But it’s worth noting that you often hear that a company is not for sale when the company is He is To sell – or at least some shareholders are putting pressure to sell.
