TNB Tech Minute: Microsoft Expands Partnership With Mistral AI

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
Countless companies invest in AI tools without tying them to tangible business outcomes. Join McKinsey later to learn how leaders rewire their organizations for sustained impact and value.

**Imani Moise** (0:15)
Here's your morning TNB Tech Minute for Tuesday, July 21st. I'm Imani Moise for the Wall Street Journal. Microsoft is expanding its AI partnership with Mistral AI, making a multi-billion dollar commitment to help the French startup build data centers in Europe. The deal is the latest attempt by both companies to reach more European enterprise AI clients as they face fierce competition from rival AI labs and other US tech giants. As part of the deal, two of Mistral's top AI models will be available in Microsoft's products. The companies declined to specify the financial terms of the deal, but a Microsoft executive said the tech giant expects to get a return when customers use its cloud platform, while Mistral will get a return when customers use its AI models.
Ozempic maker Novo Nordisk has filed a lawsuit against Eli Lilly, arguing it uses deceptive advertising to mislead customers. The complaint accuses Eli Lilly of using outdated studies to promote its branded GLP-1 drugs, Monjaro and ZetBound, as helping customers lose significantly more weight on average than Ozempic and Wigobi, which is owned by Novo Nordisk. The company says that in reality, more recent data shows that its drugs can help patients lose a comparable amount of weight. Novo Nordisk sent a cease and desist letter to Eli Lilly in April, demanding that the company suspend the advertising, but said it didn't receive a response. Eli Lilly didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
And the latest AI model launches out of China are rattling expectations for the biggest AI players in the US. Analysts say Moonshot AI's open-weight Kimi K3 model, which is said to already be competitive with America's best clothes systems, is fueling doubts about the long-term business models of open AI and Anthropic. Both American companies are expected to go public later this year. A collective $392 billion has been wiped off their expected valuations since Kimi's release last Friday.
And that's your TNB Tech Minute. We'll be back this afternoon with more.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:14)
AI transformation is more than a tech initiative. It requires a broader rewiring of human skills and ways of working. Here's Dan Swant, Senior Partner at McKinsey.

**Dan Swant** (2:24)
One of the biggest unlocks we see is the human being capabilities around the technology. Whereas before you may need to be really good at analysis, now the skill might be how do you prompt these tools to get the right answers and outcomes. And so for us, it's a really big priority to help companies to understand how do you need to change the operating model of your organization and change the underlying capabilities of the people that are interacting with the technology. And when you see that all homing together, it can be really, really special.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:54)
Discover how McKinsey helps organizations rewire to outcompete with AI at mckinsey.com/techmoves.

**SPEAKER_4** (3:01)
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