A couple of weeks after the initial release of Mistral’s AI assistant, Le Chat, the company told Le Parisien that it has reached one million downloads. In particular, Le Chat quickly reached the top spot for free downloads on the iOS App Store in the company’s home country, France.
“Go and download Le Chat, which is made by Mistral, rather than ChatGPT by OpenAI — or something else,” French president Emmanuel Macron said in a TV interview ahead of the recent AI Action Summit in Paris.
Of course, this isn’t the first AI app that has taken off. Back in November 2023, OpenAI made a splash with its AI chatbot, ChatGPT. Despite being initially restricted to iOS users in the U.S., it managed to attract 500,000 downloads in just six days. (According to Appfigures’ latest metrics, ChatGPT has now been downloaded 350 million times.)
Between January 10 and January 31, AI player DeepSeek’s mobile app also recorded one million downloads. But that was just the beginning, as the Chinese app went viral in late January — attracting millions of additional new users in just a few days.
Mistral is also facing competition from veteran Big Tech companies, too. The likes of Google and Microsoft also want to take part in the AI assistant race and capture a spot on your phone’s home screen, starting with Google’s Gemini and Microsoft’s Copilot.