In such environments, enterprises may lean towards open models like those from Mistral over proprietary models running on centralized infrastructure such as those from OpenAI or Anthropic, said Sushovan Mukhopadhyay, director analyst at Gartner. “Open-weight models appeal where customization and privacy matter, supported by on-prem deployments with self-service environments which is ideal for cost-effective, high-volume tasks where data is private and the enterprise assumes full liability for outputs,” he said.
Internal applications processing proprietary data — document analysis, code generation, workflow automation — represented the strongest fit for open-weight models. “Proprietary APIs remain attractive for external-facing apps due to provider-backed liability, audited access, and Intellectual Property indemnification via frontier model gateways which is important for managing enterprise risk,” Mukhopadhyay added.
Mistral 3 arrives as enterprises are rethinking AI procurement priorities. Data from Andreessen Horowitz showed AI spending from innovation budgets dropped from 25% to 7% between 2024 and 2025, with enterprises instead funding through centralized IT budgets. Those changes shifted procurement criteria from performance and speed to cost predictability, regulatory compliance, and vendor independence.
