From Startup Fortune · · 1m 10s
Mistral Releases Le Chonk, a 1 Trillion Parameter Open Weight Model
Mistral AI launches free 1.05 trillion parameter model for developers.
In brief
Mistral AI launches free 1.05 trillion parameter model for developers. Mistral AI released a 1.05 trillion parameter open-weight model called Le Chonk, available for free in two weeks. Originally reported by Startup Fortune.
Mistral Large 4 launches
Mistral AI unveiled Mistral Large 4 with 1.05 trillion parameters on October 6.
Free open weights release
The full open weights go out free in two weeks, October 31.
Le Chonk nickname origin
Fans called the model 'Le Chaton Fat' on Reddit and X in June, which Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch joked was 'le gros chaton'.
Model specs and pricing
Mistral Large 4 has a 1.6-billion-parameter vision encoder, one-million-token context window, and costs $1.36 per million input tokens.
API pricing comparison
GPT-5.5 lists at $5.00 per million input tokens and $30.00 per million output, versus Large 4's $1.36 and $4.18.
Open weights advantage
Mistral ships open weights for European data sovereignty, unlike US-controlled competitors.
Competitive positioning
Mistral positions Large 4 for programming and cybersecurity, not hard reasoning benchmarks.
In short
Mistral AI released a 1.05 trillion parameter open-weight model called Le Chonk, available for free in two weeks.
