By Caspar Birk, AAU Communication and Public Affairs
File photo: AAU

With the purchase, Aalborg University (AAU) takes a concrete step towards increased digital sovereignty and data security in research, and meets a growing need among researchers for reliable and scalable access to powerful AI solutions.

"Much of the research we do today is based on using leading language models, not on training them ourselves. The models offered by Mistral AI are more powerful than anything we can realistically put into operation ourselves, and they are European, says Roman Jurowetzki, Associate Professor at Aalborg University and head researcher at CAISA – The National Center for AI in Society.

Strategic choice with a European aim

The decision to invest in Mistral's AI platform was made on the recommendation of AAU's advisory body for digital research support and is part of the university's broader, strategic work on the responsible use of artificial intelligence.

– We could see the need across the academic environments: secure, European access to state-of-the-art AI, where we free ourselves from the risk of our research ending up with American suppliers. We are proud to have achieved this, says Roman Jurowetzki and continues:

- Our hope is that this will be the beginning of a closer partnership between Aalborg University and Mistral AI, a collaboration that can develop and strengthen the university's position in European AI research and infrastructure.

At the management level, the procurement of access for 800 users to Mistral AI is seen as an important step, both in researchers' day-to-day lives and in light of the university's long-term responsibility.

– The acquisition is fundamentally about giving our researchers access to powerful AI tools in a responsible manner. At the same time, it is important for us to support European solutions and take digital sovereignty and data security seriously. This is a pragmatic choice that both benefits day-to-day life and points to the future, says Thomas Bak, Dean of the Technical Faculty of IT and Design, Aalborg University.

A step towards more European AI in research

With access to Mistral's AI platform, researchers at Aalborg University get a powerful tool that can support everything from analysis to coding to more advanced AI agents, without compromising data security and European regulation requirements.

The purchase also marks a concrete step towards a more autonomous and responsible European AI infrastructure where research can be developed more in line with the values and rules that apply in Europe.

– As researchers, we need reliable, scalable access to strong language models, OCR, speech recognition, and AI agents, without having to be specialists in HPC infrastructure. In addition, it’s important that we also get Le Chat (Mistral's answer to ChatGPT, ed.) for daily use. There are already some people at AAU who would like to use it, precisely because they don't want to send their work to American Big Tech platforms, says Roman Jurowetzki.