It's not open weight, it's weights available as they use a modified MIT license that is not OSI. It's the common "if you're serving it as a business you need a license" difference, for what it's worth.
Everyone that I know considers something to be 'open weight' if the weights are available to the public in some form or another.
In other words, I don't think there's anything misleading happening in the title. When most people discover that certain restrictions exist on using the weights, they will neither be surprised nor disappointed, because the main thing that's being advertised - the weights are available for download - is true!
Where did you get this definition of open weight and who else uses it? The weights are published. Open source is already its own more restrictive category. What would you prefer we call this kind of release?
"Weights available" does not seem to be in wide use and doesn't, to me, communicate anything different than "open weights."
It's the same distinction as "open source" vs "source available" (when speaking about source code). It's not that widely in use because few people in the LLM space are diligent enough with IP to make the distinction, but the concept is easily transferable.
I believe there should be a way to distinguish this type of open-weight model from one that you can find hosted by someone else, such as Chinese models.
I think this is really splitting hairs, they just want to give people the ability to self-host (which is awesome) yet still make money off it for cloud based hosting.
But then again, I also always understood that startups want to prevent AWS from capitalizing on their source code as well and sympathize with Elastic, MongoDB, etc so perhaps I’m an outlier here.
Businesses should be able to release things to the public yet still be able to control who makes money off of it.
Many of the Chinese models are not open weight. The larger Qwen models are a good example. I assumed I could use flash next however I wanted to, since it is easy to download and runs on low-wattage desktops, but nope.
Just because OpenAI ran roughshod over the broader software community's notion of "open" which once heavily implied free-as-in-software-not-beer, doesn't mean we need to continue this pattern.
Many industries had "source available" without the word "open" for decades, and that was a broadly understood term. "Weights available" would be a reasonable analogue.
> 2. If the Licensee or any of its affiliates operates a Model as a Service business, the Licensee must enter into a separate commercial license with Mistral before using the Model or its derivative works for any commercial purpose. The Licensee may contact Mistral, using this form: https://mistral.ai/contact/, to request a commercial license.
> "Model as a Service" means giving a third party access to the Model or its derivative works for inference or post-training by any means (for instance via API or hosted endpoints), in a manner that allows such third party to exercise meaningful control over the inputs, parameters, or training data. This does not include (a) end-user products with model capabilities solely embedded within specific features or harnesses, or (b) mere relaying of requests to models hosted by others.
"Meaningful control over the inputs" is so ambiguous as to be nearly meaningless. Does a model merely summarizing a user's submitted support tickets, give that user meaningful control over the inputs?
Don't get me wrong - I appreciate that Mistral needs to walk a fine line for its own sustainability, and that sustainability is a good thing! And I may just be an old person ranting at a cloud. But "open" used to mean something, back in my day!
"The requirements set forth in Section 2 do not apply to: (a) internal use of the Model or its derivative works, defined as any use that does not make the Model or its derivative works available to third parties, [...]"
Works for me. I can host it, I can run it, I can use it; but if I want to sell access to it as an inference provider, I'd have to get a license.
The economics of open-weight models has always been shaky. It's not an OSI license yes, but metaphorically it's kinda like AGPL.
Very much not open as in open source. It's a shame an organization such as OSI doesn't get out ahead of licensing of weights, what do we call this? "Weights Available" ?
They slashed pricing, it's now nearly half vs the preview (Input: $0.7/M Tokens, Output: $2.1/M Tokens vs Input: $1.36/M Tokens, Output: $4.18/M Tokens).
At the original pricing in my evals, Mistral Large 4 Preview was not competitive. With this price point and some improvements on top, this full release warrants a major reassessment.
Finally, Le Chaton Fat. However, I'm not sure how well Mistral is doing in comparison to the other open-weight models, particularly Chinese ones, and I guess one would only really use Mistral if they want to have EU provenance for models.
"Cyber benchmarks, while achieving an average refusal rate of 96.6% on malicious cyber requests, the highest we measure among open models."
I feel like stating the obvious here and hence like I'm missing something. Where is the statistic about not refusing the non malicious requests? I can achieve the same performance with refusing when random(1000) < 967.
Unrelated to Large 4, but why is it so hard to give money to Mistral? Now they finally have a model that might be worth using, but I cannot for my life figure out how to give them money and be allowed to use their model. Its really shouldn't take more than a couple of clicks to get to a payment option.
edit: I can see that I'm alone in thinking a company should communicate their business offers publicly, sorry for the question.
Well the Mistral portal is honestly kind of confusing, considering that most people just want to enter CC details and get an API key.. But it's doable!
What? It seems very doable for people who are interested in it, are you one of those people? Because it sure seems like you're trying your hardest to not find the answer yourself.
It's not open weight, it's weights available as they use a modified MIT license that is not OSI. It's the common "if you're serving it as a business you need a license" difference, for what it's worth.
Everyone that I know considers something to be 'open weight' if the weights are available to the public in some form or another.
In other words, I don't think there's anything misleading happening in the title. When most people discover that certain restrictions exist on using the weights, they will neither be surprised nor disappointed, because the main thing that's being advertised - the weights are available for download - is true!
Where did you get this definition of open weight and who else uses it? The weights are published. Open source is already its own more restrictive category. What would you prefer we call this kind of release?
"Weights available" does not seem to be in wide use and doesn't, to me, communicate anything different than "open weights."
"Source available" is already a common term for source code that is provided with a very restrictive license or under regular copyright.
I didn't make it up, I'm using OSI's definition. Pretty analogous to why BSL or SSPL aren't "open".
https://opensource.org/ai/open-weights
OSI is not an authority on the topic, not more than anybody. Open Source as a concept predates its existence, and didn't even apply to LLM.
It's the same distinction as "open source" vs "source available" (when speaking about source code). It's not that widely in use because few people in the LLM space are diligent enough with IP to make the distinction, but the concept is easily transferable.
I think the problem with this "open weights" thing is that it doesn't map well at all with "open source".
If you think about it the actual mapping is more like:
- closed weight -> closed-source web service (e.g. gmail)
- open weights -> closed-source but you get the binaries (e.g. Minecraft)
- Actually open model (with training data, training pipeline etc.) -> open source
I believe there should be a way to distinguish this type of open-weight model from one that you can find hosted by someone else, such as Chinese models.
Isn’t this usually defined by “open” vs “free” ?
I think this is really splitting hairs, they just want to give people the ability to self-host (which is awesome) yet still make money off it for cloud based hosting.
But then again, I also always understood that startups want to prevent AWS from capitalizing on their source code as well and sympathize with Elastic, MongoDB, etc so perhaps I’m an outlier here.
Businesses should be able to release things to the public yet still be able to control who makes money off of it.
Many of the Chinese models are not open weight. The larger Qwen models are a good example. I assumed I could use flash next however I wanted to, since it is easy to download and runs on low-wattage desktops, but nope.
Just because OpenAI ran roughshod over the broader software community's notion of "open" which once heavily implied free-as-in-software-not-beer, doesn't mean we need to continue this pattern.
Many industries had "source available" without the word "open" for decades, and that was a broadly understood term. "Weights available" would be a reasonable analogue.
For clarity, the Mistral model license is here: https://huggingface.co/mistralai/Mistral-Large-4-1T-A52B/raw...
> 2. If the Licensee or any of its affiliates operates a Model as a Service business, the Licensee must enter into a separate commercial license with Mistral before using the Model or its derivative works for any commercial purpose. The Licensee may contact Mistral, using this form: https://mistral.ai/contact/, to request a commercial license.
> "Model as a Service" means giving a third party access to the Model or its derivative works for inference or post-training by any means (for instance via API or hosted endpoints), in a manner that allows such third party to exercise meaningful control over the inputs, parameters, or training data. This does not include (a) end-user products with model capabilities solely embedded within specific features or harnesses, or (b) mere relaying of requests to models hosted by others.
"Meaningful control over the inputs" is so ambiguous as to be nearly meaningless. Does a model merely summarizing a user's submitted support tickets, give that user meaningful control over the inputs?
Don't get me wrong - I appreciate that Mistral needs to walk a fine line for its own sustainability, and that sustainability is a good thing! And I may just be an old person ranting at a cloud. But "open" used to mean something, back in my day!
"The requirements set forth in Section 2 do not apply to: (a) internal use of the Model or its derivative works, defined as any use that does not make the Model or its derivative works available to third parties, [...]"
Works for me. I can host it, I can run it, I can use it; but if I want to sell access to it as an inference provider, I'd have to get a license.
The economics of open-weight models has always been shaky. It's not an OSI license yes, but metaphorically it's kinda like AGPL.
Raw license text:
https://huggingface.co/mistralai/Mistral-Large-4-1T-A52B/raw...
Very much not open as in open source. It's a shame an organization such as OSI doesn't get out ahead of licensing of weights, what do we call this? "Weights Available" ?
I think this open debate depends on who you talk to. Not all the people agree with this vision.
They slashed pricing, it's now nearly half vs the preview (Input: $0.7/M Tokens, Output: $2.1/M Tokens vs Input: $1.36/M Tokens, Output: $4.18/M Tokens).
At the original pricing in my evals, Mistral Large 4 Preview was not competitive. With this price point and some improvements on top, this full release warrants a major reassessment.
[0] https://docs.mistral.ai/inference/pricing
seems better now, but still, it will be hard to compete. It's just that a direct comparison to frontier models will not speak to Mistrals favor.
Why does everyone avoid publishing the most important part of the pricing while doing a comparison?
My coding sessions have a >97% input cache rate. DeepSeek got us spoiled. I am not going to use any AI provider with exorbitant or hidden cache rates.
They did, I just didn't include it: $0.07 cached input / M
So 10x-20x vs Deepseek v4.1 Flash and I don't have on hand how efficient Mistral is regarding cache hits, etc.
On the other hand, could be some decent competition lowering pricing if the models general performance warrants broad hosting.
Kind of buried down at the end:
Finally, Le Chaton Fat. However, I'm not sure how well Mistral is doing in comparison to the other open-weight models, particularly Chinese ones, and I guess one would only really use Mistral if they want to have EU provenance for models.
We were all waiting for this initial miau.
I love that you picked the orange cat. It's always the orange ones who bully the chinese cats (I love all cats so it's fine)
(:
"Cyber benchmarks, while achieving an average refusal rate of 96.6% on malicious cyber requests, the highest we measure among open models."
I feel like stating the obvious here and hence like I'm missing something. Where is the statistic about not refusing the non malicious requests? I can achieve the same performance with refusing when random(1000) < 967.
That's really great! Congratulations to everyone working at Mistral!
Now, perhaps Kimi 3.1 is missing from the benchmarks, and Deepseek 4.1 Flash is still has impressive!
Unrelated to Large 4, but why is it so hard to give money to Mistral? Now they finally have a model that might be worth using, but I cannot for my life figure out how to give them money and be allowed to use their model. Its really shouldn't take more than a couple of clicks to get to a payment option.
edit: I can see that I'm alone in thinking a company should communicate their business offers publicly, sorry for the question.
I was curious about this, as I’ve seen it so many times for multiple providers, especially Mistral and Google.
Clicked sign in, was presented with a sign up form, got a free account. From there could upgrade to pro plan or pay-as-you-go.
I agree it was perhaps too hidden, but calling it hard is not fair I think.
Well the Mistral portal is honestly kind of confusing, considering that most people just want to enter CC details and get an API key.. But it's doable!
It's as easy as going to console.mistral.ai no ?
Maybe? Its impossible to tell. I'm not going to create a user in the hope that there is a subscription service in there somewhere.
What digital services do you pay for that don't require sign-up, or an account?
> why is it so hard to give money to Mistral?
Maybe your definition of hard is much different than everyone else's...
I searched for "Mistral subscription" on Kagi and this was the first link: https://mistral.ai/pricing/
You will not create a user, but want to pay?
There is a subscription in there. I'm paying.
What? It seems very doable for people who are interested in it, are you one of those people? Because it sure seems like you're trying your hardest to not find the answer yourself.
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