It’s well within the capabilities of governments in developed countries. If Mistral did not already exist, I would definitely expect the French government to invest in a national LLM, if only because of how defensive they are of the French language.

<< That’s a thousand millions.

I can't say that you are lying and you are not exactly exaggerating either. It is true that a new SOTA model -- from literal scratch -- it would be expensive.

But, and it is not a small but, is the starting point really zero?