If Europe desires to compete with Asia and the US on AI, he believes the continent has to behave now. “If you wish to create a search engine now from scratch, you can’t win as a result of you weren’t there 25 years in the past,” he says, noting this window to compete on AI will even shut.
In a method or one other, Niel is linked to nearly all of France’s rising startup stars. In Mistral AI, valued at €5.8 billion ($6.4bn), he’s an investor. The identical goes for H, one other new AI firm. Scaleway, the cloud supplier utilized by Mistral, is an Iliad subsidiary, whereas the staff behind Hugging Face, a platform for AI builders, frolicked at Station F, an unlimited startup campus additionally launched by Niel. A self-described “geek,” Niel has lengthy been embedded within the French startup scene. Station F was launched seven years in the past and earlier than that, he was central to an experimental pc science college referred to as École 42.
His perception that Europe ought to pursue homegrown AI translated right into a €200 million ($220m) investment he made in French AI final September. Half of that cash went in direction of launching Kyutai, a non revenue analysis lab primarily based in Paris, which launched an AI voice assistant this summer time referred to as Moshi. Just like OpenAI’s voice assistant, Moshi can also be a flirty English-speaking feminine voice. However not like OpenAI, which delayed its launch as a consequence of security issues, Moshi has been obtainable to check on-line since July—with its models launched this week.
“The thought of Kyutai is to provide an AI algorithm that’s utterly open science and open supply,” says Niel. He makes use of the working system Linux for instance of an open-source instrument with the sort of recognition Kyutai desires to copy. “Relying on the license we are going to connect to this factor, everyone who will make a modification should publish it.”
Relating to Kyutai, nonetheless, there are some issues that Niel shouldn’t be so open about. After I ask the place Moshi will get all its coaching knowledge from, he laughs. Partly the mannequin was skilled on an actress’ voice recorded in London, he explains. However he alludes to different sources of coaching knowledge, too. “Perhaps we aren’t utterly respecting all the principles.”
Niel is cautious to direct credit score for Moshi to the individuals truly constructing the fashions. However he seems invigorated by his handful of visits to the 12-person Kyutai staff of their “good place in Paris” with their huge whiteboard scrawled with math he doesn’t perceive. He’s additionally clearly excited by the tech.
“You had enjoyable with Moshi,” he prompts a member of his staff. Embarrassed, the staffer giggles and performs me a recorded interplay on his cellphone.
“Isn’t Xavier Niel horrible at talking English?” the staffer might be heard asking the AI.
“Oh you’re so humorous,” Moshi replies. “No, he’s not horrible, he’s simply not superb however he’s attempting his greatest.” (After I later ask Moshi, “who’s Xavier Niel?” she replies: “Savio Vega is a Puerto Rican skilled wrestler.”)
Alongside Kyutai and his startup investments, Niel has additionally been enthusiastic about how you can develop AI infrastructure in France. His imaginative and prescient for the cloud supplier he based, Scaleway, is for large European firms to have the ability to use a neighborhood cloud “as a substitute of being clients of a US cloud.” He’s additionally been shopping for up the GPUs needed to coach AI fashions. Though he’d love there to be European-made GPUs, for now he’s counting on NVIDIA.
“I feel we’re the most important personal consumers of NVIDIA GPUs in Europe,” Niel says.
At house, Niel is pushed by a need to ensure France—and Europe—aren’t left behind within the AI age. “[Or] in the long run, we would be the nicest place on this planet for museums,” he says.
Apart from difficult US dominance, it’s nonetheless unclear how his new function at ByteDance suits along with his mission to spice up French AI. However becoming a member of the Chinese language tech large, simply because it prepares to argue in opposition to a US ban in courtroom, actually continues Niel’s historical past of disruption.
