Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch defends AI in warfare, directly rebuts Pope Leo criticism

Mistral rejects Pope Leo criticism of AI military use

PARIS, May 28 (Reuters) - Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch on Thursday rejected criticism from Pope Leo over the military use of AI, saying Europe needed its own tools to deter rivals using the technology. Pope Leo issued a document on Monday urging international regulation and warning it could spread false information and fuel constant conflict. He also criticised the use of AI in warfare. Mensch, who is also Mistral's co-founder, said Europe could not ignore the ⁠use of AI by adversaries. "We're all for peace, but if you look at our rivals and adversaries in the world, they're using artificial intelligence ... As long as we have adversaries that are threatening, and they are threatening, we do need to have our own capabilities," he told reporters. NEW DATA CENTRE Mistral, which was valued at €11.7 billion last year, positions itself as a European alternative to U.S. AI giants as part of a wider push in Europe to reduce dependency on U.S. technology companies. The company said on Thursday it would build a data centre in Les Ulis, France, with 10 megawatts of computing power, due to open in the second half of 2026. The ⁠move, part of a broader €4 billion investment strategy, will complement existing facilities in Sweden and France and help the company reach a planned 200 megawatts of computing power by the end of 2027 and 1 gigawatt by 2030. It said the capacity would serve its own needs and be rented to other AI labs. The expansion is part of Europe's broader effort to accelerate data-centre ⁠infrastructure to compete with the U.S., with support from French President Emmanuel Macron, who has highlighted the country's energy exports as an enabler for such projects. Around the world, including in France, data-centre construction increasingly faces opposition from people who live near the sites. AI ⁠BACKLASH, GRADUATES BOOING Mistral's announcement follows growing scepticism towards tech firms, particularly among younger generations. Videos have recently surfaced of students booing executives during U.S. graduation ceremonies, highlighting concerns over the societal impact of AI. "I think there is some expected ⁠anguish around artificial intelligence," Mensch said. "It's not the first time that people are a bit anguished at something coming up. But we'll be fine. We'll find a way to use it efficiently." Reporting by Elizabeth Howcroft in Paris and by Leo Marchandon in Gdansk; Editing by Mark Potter and Matt Scuffham Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab * Suggested Topics: * Artificial Intelligence Elizabeth Howcroft Thomson Reuters Elizabeth Howcroft reports on finance and technology, including Europe's "fintech" industry and cryptocurrencies. She was part of the team which won a Loeb award and SABEW award for covering the collapse of crypto exchange FTX in 2022. Leo Marchandon Thomson Reuters Leo is a news reporter based in Gdansk, focusing on the media, telecoms, and technology sectors in France and the Benelux countries. Prior to this, he worked in France, covering regional and business news, including politics, policies, economy and business with strong focus on tech startups.

Mistral's Arthur Mensch directly rebuts Pope Leo on AI in warfare

Three days after the Vatican called for AI to be 'disarmed', the Mistral CEO defended his company's defence-AI work, arguing Europe cannot afford unilateral restraint. Arthur Mensch, the chief executive of French AI startup Mistral, pushed back directly on Thursday against Pope Leo XIV's call to "disarm AI," arguing that European companies cannot afford to step back from defence-AI work when adversaries are actively deploying the technology. The remarks, made three days after the Vatican published Magnifica Humanitas, the Pope's first encyclical, mark one of the most direct corporate responses yet to what has rapidly become the Catholic Church's most consequential intervention on AI. "We're all for peace," Mensch said, "but if you look at our rivals and adversaries in the world, they're using artificial intelligence. As long as we have adversaries that are threatening, and they are threatening, we do need to have our own capabilities." The Mistral CEO's framing is the structural defence of military-AI development the European tech sector has been working toward since the Ukraine war, but his decision to articulate it as an explicit rebuttal of a sitting Pope is what makes Thursday's remarks notable. The encyclical itself is the document Mensch is responding to. Magnifica Humanitas, the 42,300-word text Leo published on 25 May, calls for the disarmament of AI, the establishment of three binding requirements around any autonomous-weapons deployment, traceability of decisions, meaningful human control over lethal action, and international rules to slow the technological arms race, and explicitly rejects the traditional "just war" theory as "outdated." The Pope further argued that military force can be justified only in "self-defence in the strictest sense." The encyclical is the most direct papal intervention in tech regulation in decades. Mensch's position contains its own theological echo. The Pope's "self-defence in the strictest sense" framing and Mensch's "adversaries are threatening, so we need our own capabilities" framing are not, strictly speaking, in contradiction. Both accept the legitimacy of self-defence; both reject offensive use. Where they diverge is on what self-defence requires in 2026. Leo's position is that the threshold for the introduction of lethal AI is higher than any state has so far articulated. Mensch's is that Europe cannot meet credible adversaries with that threshold while those adversaries operate without it. The commercial backdrop matters here. Mistral has been visibly building a defence-AI portfolio since at least early 2025. The Helsing partnership announced at the Paris AI Action Summit in February 2025 produced joint work on vision-language-action models designed for "a new generation of defence systems." Helsing has already deployed AI systems in Eurofighter combat jets, battlefield simulations and Ukraine drone operations. Mistral has separately been pitching for defence contracts with multiple European governments. Mensch's public push-back against the Pope is therefore not a hypothetical posture, but a defence of an existing business line that is now under formal moral censure from the Vatican. The Pope's influence on the AI policy debate, on the other hand, has been larger than anyone expected six months ago. Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah appeared at the encyclical's launch, lending Silicon Valley validation to the document. The European Commission welcomed it on Monday evening; OpenAI, Google and Microsoft issued formal expressions of respect. The Vatican is not, in any meaningful sense, a regulatory authority over AI development. What it has produced with Magnifica Humanitas is a moral vocabulary that legislators and policymakers can use, and Mensch's rebuttal acknowledges, by its existence, how much that vocabulary now matters. The clean rhetorical contrast obscures a quieter European-policy reality. Brussels is moving toward enforceable AI-warfare frameworks but has not yet codified the kind of binding restrictions Magnifica Humanitas calls for. Member-state governments are simultaneously expanding their defence-AI procurement budgets. The contradiction is real, and the next year of EU AI Act enforcement, member-state defence spending, and Vatican-aligned policy advocacy will indicate which side wins out. Mensch, on Thursday's evidence, has chosen to bet his company's public posture on the defence-procurement side of that argument.

Mistral defends military AI, expands data centres

PARIS, May 28 (Reuters) - Mistral, widely seen as Europe's leading AI company and its best hope of challenging top U.S. peers, on Thursday defended military uses of the technology as it unveiled a new French data centre. Mistral CEO and co-founder Arthur Mensch told reporters that Europe needed its own AI tools because rivals and adversaries were already using them. His comments countered criticism from Pope Leo, who on Monday urged international regulation to curb the development of AI systems and warned against the use of AI in warfare. "We're all for peace, but if you look at our rivals and adversaries in the world, they're using artificial intelligence [...] As long as we have adversaries that are threatening, and they are threatening, we do need to have our own capabilities," Mensch told reporters when asked about the Pope's comments. EUROPEAN AI ALTERNATIVE Mistral, valued at about 11.7 billion euros ($13.4 billion) last year, supplies the French military and has positioned itself as a European alternative to U.S. technology giants at a time when governments in the region are pushing for greater technological independence. That push also extends to computing infrastructure. Mistral said it would build a new data centre in Les Ulis, France, with 10 megawatts of computing power, in the second half of 2026. The move, part of a broader EUR4 billion investment strategy, will complement existing facilities in Sweden and France and help the company reach a planned 200 megawatts by the end of 2027 and 1 gigawatt by 2030. Mistral also announced new customers, including Airbus across commercial, defence and space activities. The expansion coincides with growing resistance to data-centre projects in some communities and spreading unease about AI, especially among younger people, even as Europe tries to build enough computing capacity to stay in the race. "I think there is some expected anguish around artificial intelligence, in that it's profoundly changing the way people are working," Mensch said. "It's not the first time that people are a bit anguished at something coming up. But we'll be fine. We'll find a way to use it efficiently," he added. (Reporting by Elizabeth Howcroft in Paris and by Leo Marchandon in Gdansk; Editing by Mark Potter and Matt Scuffham) By Elizabeth Howcroft and Leo Marchandon

Mistral defends AI use in warfare, rebuts Pope criticism

PARIS, May 28 (Reuters) - The founder of French AI startup Mistral on Thursday pushed back against criticism from the Pope over the use of AI in warfare, saying Europe must be able to protect itself as rivals deploy the technology. "We're all for peace, but if you look at our rivals and adversaries in the world, they're using artificial intelligence [...] As long as we have adversaries that are threatening, and they are threatening, we do need to have our own capabilities," Mistral CEO and co-founder Arthur Mensch said. The company also announced a new data centre in Les Ulis, France. Here are the details: o Pope Leo issued a document on Monday, urging international regulation to curb the development of AI systems, warning they could spread misinformation and risk fuelling perpetual conflict. He also criticised the use of AI in warfare. o Asked about the comments, Mistral defended AI's use in military contexts. The company provides AI models to the French military. o Mistral also announced plans for a new data centre in Les Ulis with 10 megawatts of computing power, due to open in the third quarter of 2026. o Mistral has already announced two other data centres, in Sweden and France, as part of a EUR4 billion investment plan to reach 200 MW of computing power by the end of 2027. o Data centre projects are facing local opposition around the world, including in France. o Asked about videos showing students booing executives discussing AI at U.S. graduation ceremonies, Mensch said: "I think there is some expected anguish around artificial intelligence, in that it's profoundly changing the way people are working.". o "It's not the first time that people are a bit anguished at something coming up. But we'll be fine. We'll find a way to use it efficiently," he added. (Reporting by Elizabeth Howcroft; Additional reporting by Leo Marchandon in Gdansk; Editing by Mark Potter)