Can Le Chat, a mobile app from French AI startup Mistral, take the enterprise’s eyes off DeepSeek on iPhone and Android?

Although the AI market in recent days has seemed to collapse around DeepSeek, and OpenAI there are many other teams of brilliant engineering teams that are fielding large language model (LLMs). These are worth a glance as users and enterprise seek to use the newest and greatest.

Take a look Mistral you haveis a French startup that has quietly been developing and releasing open-source and proprietary models to consumers and businesses.

Despite the recent rise of new reasoning agents and models, Mistral continues to position itself as an alternative to OpenAI’s ChatGPT signature chatbot and DeepSeek mobile app for those who are concerned about data privacy and security.

Mistral has finally launched a mobile version of its free web-based chatbot. Le Chat, a chatbot for iOS and Androidis now available. It also comes with a new Enterprise plan for private infrastructure and a Pro Plan at $14.99 per monthly. Mistral AI appears to be making a concerted effort to convince companies that there are viable alternatives to DeepSeek or OpenAI.

Mistral’s Le Chat offers business owners an AI tool that integrates into enterprise environments, performs at high speeds, and — most importantly for some customers — doesn’t send user data to China.

Mistral’s new releases are aimed at both consumers and enterprise.

The latest Mistral AI release comes as enterprises evaluate AI partners on the basis of data privacy, security, and deployment flexibility. Le Chat’s Enterprise Tier, which allows businesses the option to deploy the assistant via private infrastructure, SaaS, or virtual private cloud, suggests that Mistral’s target market is the same corporate users, who may have considered OpenAI’s GPT-4, or Anthropic’s Claude but wanted more control over their models and data.

Mistral’s strategy mirrors the recent move made by DeepSeek. The Chinese AI company released DeepSeek R1, a powerful reasoning engine that offers capabilities and performances similar to OpenAI’s “o” series of models. (o1, o1 mini and o3 mini are out now, and o3 full will be following soon) but at a fraction (30 times cheaper for enterprise users than OpenAI’s o1).

DeepSeek’s growth in the West has been met with privacy and security concerns relating to China’s data retention laws and censorship. Analysts have raised concerns about whether AI systems developed by Chinese companies could be subjected to Beijing’s data-access regulations. This has led enterprises to be cautious when integrating these systems. Le Chat’s non Chinese infrastructure could be a selling point for companies worried about where their AI models store and process data. Mistral AI, unlike DeepSeek which operates under Chinese law, is a European-based company in France. Subject to EU data privacy laws (GDPR) instead of China’s Cybersecurity Law (PIPL) or the Personal Information Protection Law.

Mistral AI believes that Le Chat’s performance will also help it to stand out. The company’s low-latency AI models power the mobile app, which Mistral claims can generate responses up to 1,000 words per minute. Le Chat distinguishes itself from other chat platforms by integrating real time web search and sourcing via journalistic and social media platforms. This allows for fact-based responses, rather than relying on pre-trained information. Le Chat is a viable alternative for businesses who require AI insights that are more current and evidence-based, rather than static training data. Le Chat for enterprises also includes

• A code interpreter: This allows in-place executions of scripts, scientific calculations and data visualization.OCR and document handling
• : Industry grade optical character recognition for PDFs, spreadsheets, and even low-quality or complex images.
• Image creation: Powered by Black Forest Labs Flux Ultra to create photorealistic content.

OpenAI and Anthropic are undercutting Mistral AI on price

Mistral AI also has a different pricing strategy compared to its competitors. Le Chat’s Pro plan costs $14.99 per monthly. OpenAI charges $20 for ChatGPT Plus, while Anthropic’s Claude is priced differently based on the number of tokens.

In addition, many features, including the latest models and document uploads, as well as image generation, are free. Limitations only apply to power users.

Le Chat Team offers priority support, unified charging and integration credits for businesses that are looking to adopt the software across their entire team. Enterprise deployments, on the other hand, allow companies to use custom AI models tailored specifically to their needs.

Quick hands-on comparision

While writing and editing this article, I tested Mistral’s Le Chat iOS application on my iPhone and compared my prompts with my default AI assistant OpenAI’s ChatGPT based on GPT-4o.

Le Chat’s outputs were faster than ChatGPT but its Black Forest Labs ultra model image generation capabilities weren’t as accurate as ChatGPT built-in connection with OpenAI’s DALLE 3 image model. This model is now five months old and not the most current. OpenAI’s web search connectivity provided a richer diversity of sources, compared to Le Chat which defaulted the AFP (a French-language yet English-language publishing and wire service) that Mistral. In January 2025, we partnered up with.

Below are some of my comparisons between Le Chat and ChatGPT.

The cat:

ChatGPT:

The cat:

ChatGPT:

AI competition is intensifying

While OpenAI and Anthropic are still dominant players in the industry, enterprises are actively evaluating other AI providers who offer better pricing, flexible deployment options, and clearer guarantees of data privacy.

As DeepSeek faces scrutiny over its Chinese data connections and OpenAI deals with ongoing enterprise adoption issues, Mistral AI’s European positioning, quick performance and competitive pricing may make it a more attractive choice for businesses that are looking to integrate AI assistants in their workflows.

The latest version of Le Chat signals to companies that they are weighing their AI options that there are viable alternatives that are not U.S.-based or Chinese-based. Mistral AI is clearly committed to being at the forefront of this shift.