Ecosia reportedly drops Mistral for Chinese open models Qwen, GLM and Kimi, IT Home reports
Reported by IT Home · not yet confirmed by the company or a second independent outlet. We update this page when it is.
German search engine Ecosia has switched from Mistral to Chinese open models Qwen, GLM and Kimi via partner Melious, cutting costs by half and gaining performance, IT Home reported. The move follows Ecosia's May switch from OpenAI to Mistral, which suffered server overloads and quality issues.
China context
- Outside China
- Global API · ithome.com
- Claims
- Company-reported; not yet independently evaluated
- For builders
- European developers can access Chinese open-weight models like Qwen, GLM and Kimi through partners such as Melious, with reported cost and performance benefits over some Western alternatives.
- For investors
- Adoption of Chinese open models by a European search engine indicates a market opening for Chinese model providers in Europe, potentially affecting Western model vendors' enterprise market share.
Translated from Chinese. Quotes and facts link to the original sources.
Ecosia CEO Christian Kroll said the company was disappointed with Mistral's quality, which he said is a year behind competitors, and cited technical problems such as server overloads. He also questioned Mistral's neutrality due to its reliance on international investors and its environmental alignment. Kroll said China's push for open-source large models is an opportunity for Europe, allowing use of powerful open models without spending billions on training. Ecosia now uses Qwen, GLM and Kimi models through Melious, halving costs and improving performance.
The evidence does not include technical benchmarks or model version details. The reported performance gain and cost reduction are company statements from Ecosia's CEO, not independently verified.
European AI adopters can cut model costs by half by switching to Chinese open-weight models, as Ecosia reports doing with Qwen, GLM and Kimi. This pressures Western model providers like Mistral on both price and reliability for enterprise search use cases.
For Ecosia, the switch reportedly halves AI service costs while improving performance, directly affecting its operating margin for AI-powered search. For Chinese model providers, adoption by a European search engine is a concrete enterprise reference outside China.
A verifiable next signal is whether Ecosia publishes technical details or benchmark comparisons for Qwen, GLM and Kimi in its search stack, and whether other European companies follow with similar switches. The report relies on unnamed sources and an interview; independent confirmation from Ecosia or Melious is not yet available.