Chinese models are trained on dubiously collected model traces from Claude/OpenAI that are purchased from model routers. All the major Chinese models use this data. That's one reason they've been able to catch up with Anthropic/OpenAI so quickly, they have so much data.

Mistral can't train on that data, because this data would be illegal to purchase & train on in the EU.

They've never made a near-frontier model. Which is a valid criticism for a model training company

> can you elaborate what are their fundamental flaws that are not fixable by funds?

Culture.

In terms of output, EU working culture is inferior to American/Chinese working culture.

Work life balance is irrelevant for frontier/sovereign AI.