Artificial Analysis Benchmarks Mistral Large 4: France Rises to Third on Frontier Leaderboard

On October 6, Artificial Analysis published a full review of the Mistral Large 4 Research Public Preview: the model has 1T total parameters with 49B active, scores 38 on the Intelligence Index—placing it in the same tier as and close to Gemini/GPT—and its weights are slated to be open-sourced by the end of the month. The review calls it a landmark marking France's return to the strongest model camp outside the US and China, with open-source dynamics and pricing strategy worth watching.

Confirmed

• Model specs: 1T parameters, 49B active, 38 on the Intelligence Index, in line with GP… (remaining metrics in the full review match the main post)
• Country rankings: with 38 points, France rises to third on the frontier-model nation leaderboard, behind only the US (Claude Opus 5.5, 58 points) and China (MiMo-V2.6-Pro, 46 points)
• Pricing: $1.36/$4.18 per million input/output tokens, with cached input at $0.14; 50% off for the first two weeks after launch, bringing per-task cost to $0.57—but full-task cost is about $1.13, still 4x that of comparable open-source models and higher than competitors like GLM-5.3
• Cybersecurity capability: 50 on the Cyber Index, tied with GLM-5.3-Flash and below MiMo-V2.6-Pro (56); the reviewers expect its Cyber ranking to enter the top three among open-source models once the weights ship
• Artificial Analysis has launched a full review results page covering all capability metrics

Why It Matters

• If the 1T-scale weights are open-sourced on schedule at month's end, it will significantly reshape the open-source model landscape and establish France as a third pole beyond the US and China
• The high pricing has sparked value-for-money debate: leading capability but several times the cost of peer open-source models may limit real-world adoption
• It still trails China's top open-source models (MiMo-V2.6-Pro) in specialized capabilities like cybersecurity, and post-release ranking shifts are worth tracking

2026-10-06 ~ 2026-10-06 · 6 related posts

Full story(5 episodes)→

• Episode 1: Mistral Unveils Mistral Large 4, a 1T-Parameter Open Multimodal Model(2026-10-06, 42 posts)
• Episode 2: Mistral Trains 1T-Parameter Model on 3,800 Grace Blackwell Chips in Europe(2026-10-06, 3 posts)
• Episode 3: Mistral Large 4 Still in RL Training, Expected by Month's End(2026-10-06, 3 posts)
• Episode 4: Artificial Analysis Benchmarks Mistral Large 4: France Rises to Third on Frontier Leaderboard(2026-10-06, 6 posts)
• Episode 5: Mistral Large 4.0 Surfaces on Hugging Face, Weights to Open-Source This Month(2026-10-06, 3 posts)

• [source] Mistral Large 4 scores 38 on AA Intelligence Index, 1T open weights due end of October — ArtificialAnlys · 2026-10-06
• [source] France ranks third by country for frontier model intelligence on AA index — ArtificialAnlys · 2026-10-06
• [source] Mistral Large 4 pricing: $1.13 per task, 4x costier than similar open weights models — ArtificialAnlys · 2026-10-06
• Mistral Large 4 scores 50 on Cyber Index, set for top-three open weights spot — ArtificialAnlys · 2026-10-06
• Full benchmark results for Mistral Large 4 Preview published by Artificial Analysis — ArtificialAnlys · 2026-10-06
• Mistral Large 4 scores just 38 on AA intelligence index, panned for a 1T model — realmrfakename · 2026-10-06