“Sorry if nuclear power is a real obstacle”: the German search engine Ecosia abandons the French Mistral for Chinese AI

It is May 2026. A European technological alliance full of promise is emerging: the German ecological search engine Ecosia replaces the American giant OpenAI with the French flagship Mistral AI as AI supplier. Barely five months later, the German company is already backtracking. In an interview with the online media Politico on Tuesday, October 6, Christian Kroll, founder and CEO of Ecosia, announced that he was ending this partnership, while not skimping on criticism of the French AI solution.

The first justifications for Ecosia relate to the technical aspect. “We are disappointed by the quality of Mistral,” said the boss of the German company, created in 2009. He even states that the models of the French AI champion are “a year behind” the competition. After encountering recurring technical problems, Christian Kroll believes that Ecosia was “simply too important a customer for Mistral”.

With Politico, Christian Kroll also took the opportunity to express his doubts about the environmental alignment of Mistral. What puts off the green German search engine? The preponderant share of nuclear power in the French electricity mix, on which Mistral relies. An argument that may seem paradoxical: Ecosia is in fact turning its back on 95% carbon-free tricolor electricity - thanks to its almost 70% nuclear power -, forgetting a little quickly that although Germany is close to 60% renewable, a good part of its energy supply still relies massively on coal and gas.

Ecosia also has its own vision of technological independence, and it does not require a majority of foreign investors in its capital, as is the case with Mistral AI - notably with the American Nvidia or the South Korean Samsung. The French start-up would therefore be “not truly sovereign” in its eyes, even though it is often presented as the European spearhead in the AI ​​race.

The fallback solution found by Ecosia is enough to leave one doubtful. To reduce its costs by half, the German search engine is turning to Melious, a platform hosting “open-weight” models (freely downloadable), and is turning to Chinese AI such as Qwen, GLM or Kimi. For a European company equipping the German Ministry of the Environment or even the British health system, this turnaround raises questions, particularly regarding European digital independence. Without forgetting the concerns linked to the political censorship integrated into these Asian models, which is complicated to circumvent.