Mistral Launches AI-Powered Coding Assistant Mistral Code

French AI startup Mistral is making waves with the launch of Mistral Code, a new AI-powered coding assistant designed to compete with established players like Windsurf, Anysphere’s Cursor, and GitHub Copilot. This client is a fork of the open-source project Continue and integrates multiple AI models, an in-IDE assistant, and enterprise-grade tooling into a unified platform.

Mistral Code is currently available in private beta for JetBrains platforms and Microsoft’s VS Code, two of the most popular development environments. Its goal is ambitious: to deliver best-in-class coding models that enable everything from instant code completions to complex multi-step refactoring tasks, all deployable flexibly in the cloud, on reserved capacity, or on air-gapped on-premises GPUs.

The client leverages a suite of proprietary models including Codestral for autocomplete, Codestral Embed for code search and retrieval, Devstral for agentic coding tasks, and Mistral Medium for chat assistance. Supporting over 80 programming languages and numerous third-party plugins, it can reason about files, terminal outputs, and issues to provide contextual assistance.

Several high-profile customers, including consulting firm Capgemini, Spanish and Portuguese bank Abanca, and the French national railway company SNCF, are already using Mistral Code in production environments. The platform allows fine-tuning or post-training of models on private repositories and offers IT managers granular controls through a rich admin console featuring observability, seat management, and usage analytics.

The rise of AI programming assistants reflects a broader trend: developers are increasingly adopting AI tools to boost productivity despite ongoing challenges in code quality. A recent poll found that 76% of developers have used or plan to use AI tools in their workflows, underscoring the growing demand for intelligent coding solutions.

Founded in 2023, Mistral has quickly established itself as a frontier AI lab, backed by major venture capital firms and having raised over €1.1 billion. Beyond Mistral Code, the company offers a range of AI-powered services including the chatbot platform Le Chat and enterprise chatbot solutions that integrate with popular services like Gmail and Google Drive.

Looking ahead, Mistral plans to continue enhancing Mistral Code and contribute improvements back to the open-source Continue project, fostering a collaborative ecosystem for AI-assisted software development.