Mistral AI launches Medium 3 – cuts costs and challenges DeepSeek
French company Mistral AI has launched Mistral Medium 3, featuring significantly lower prices and a focus on enterprise integration in a direct challenge to competitors such as DeepSeek.
What happened?
On 7 May 2025, French AI developer Mistral AI launched its new model, Mistral Medium 3. The model offers enterprise-specific features including hybrid and local VPC deployment as well as custom post-training. The pricing is set at $0.40 per million input tokens and $2.00 per million output tokens, representing a cost reduction of up to 87.5 percent compared to previous levels.
Key facts
| Lanseringsdatum | 7 maj 2025 |
|---|---|
| Input-pris (API) | 0,40 USD / 1M tokens |
| Output-pris (API) | 2,00 USD / 1M tokens |
| Kostnadssänkning | 87,5 % |
| Hårdvarukrav (egenvärd) | Minst 4 GPU:er |
”I prishänseende överträffar den även lågprismodeller som DeepSeek V3, oavsett om det gäller API-användning eller egenvärda system.”
Why it matters
Mistral AI is positioning the model as a direct rival to both DeepSeek V3 and Claude 3.7 Sonnet. According to the company, Mistral Medium 3 achieves over 90 percent of the performance of Claude 3.7 Sonnet at a significantly lower cost, while simultaneously challenging low-cost alternatives on the market.
Who is affected?
The launch is primarily aimed at enterprises, system integrators, and software developers seeking cost-effective AI models for programming and STEM-related tasks. The model requires at least four GPUs for self-hosted deployment.
Impact on the EU
As a French company, Mistral AI operates within the framework of the EU's forthcoming AI Act. The company emphasises the option for local and private cloud (VPC) deployment, making the model suitable for European companies with strict requirements regarding data sovereignty and GDPR compliance.
What else you should know
Reactions from the open-source community have been mixed. Several developers have expressed disappointment that Mistral is moving away from its previously open strategy, while some users in the community point out that competitors such as Qwen 3 and Gemma 3 continue to offer strong open-source alternatives.
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