BNP Paribas has entered into a comprehensive partnership agreement with Mistral AI, covering all its current and future commercial models, the French bank said on Tuesday.

The deal, which expands a relationship that started in September, will see BNP Paribas implement Mistral AI's large language models across multiple business areas, such as customer support, sales and IT, it said.

As companies race for partnerships to adopt generative AI, Mistral is seen as the European alternative to OpenAI.

The Paris-based startup was founded in 2023 by former Google Deep Mind and Meta AI scientists and has since raised more than 1 billion euros in three successive rounds of financing. It has released both open source and properietary AI models to challenge market leading competitors.

"Generative AI has significant potential to enhance our client offering across sales, trading, research and more, and I am excited to continue our work with Mistral AI towards that goal," Olivier Osty, Head of BNP Paribas Global Markets, said in a statement.

(Reporting by Leo Marchandon in Gdansk; editing by Milla Nissi)